Real Neighborhood Restaurants Aren’t Chains
For many eating out means visiting a familiar chain like a McDonald’s or an Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar. The funny thing is places like Applebee’s are rarely in actual neighborhoods. But in St. Louis we have so many locally owned establishments within our neighborhoods. I recently retuned to one such place for lunch.
Rue Lafayette is on Lafayette Ave facing Lafayette Park. It’s not part of a commercial district or adjacent to other commercial businesses. All the surrounding buildings are residential.
The menu changes which is easy since it’s written in chalk. Area residents can walk down the street to grab a bite and enjoy a glass of wine or beer as well. I didn’t have any alcohol but I did treat myself to dessert after a salad.
You can keep the big franchise places out there, for me I’m happy with locally owned establishments.
– Steve Patterson
Thanks Steve. I will have to visit Rue. Another great example of a neighborhood restaurant is Onesto on Finkman in South City. Check it out if you have not already.
Thanks Steve. I will have to visit Rue. Another great example of a neighborhood restaurant is Onesto on Finkman in South City. Check it out if you have not already.
I’ve been to Onesto once — loved it. So many great choices!
Onesto’s owner, Vito Racanelli, recently opened Mad Tomato in Clayton. Niche continues to expand beyond Benton Park. Does ownership of multiple locations create a “chain”, or do they need to have exactly the same name and look?
No, a local person having different restaurants isn’t even remotely a chain, from Wikipedia: “A restaurant chain is a set of related restaurants with the same name in many different locations that are either under shared corporate ownership (e.g., In-N-Out Burgers in the U.S.) or franchising agreements. Typically, the restaurants within a chain are built to a standard format (thru architectural prototype development)and offer a standard menu.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_store
I’ve been to Onesto once — loved it. So many great choices!
Great place, Steve! Â One of my favorite weekend spots! Head that way for a few laps around the park, and then treat myself to delicious food, a warm and yummy latte and a little music!Â
Great place, Steve! One of my favorite weekend spots! Head that way for a few laps around the park, and then treat myself to delicious food, a warm and yummy latte and a little music!
Labels are dangerous. Every chain started out with a single location, in some neighborhood. Trattoria Marcella, in my ‘hood, announced this week that they will be opening a second location in Ballwin. I guess this changes them from a PC “neighborhood” restaurant into an “evil” chain restaurant. The first Chipotle filled a vacant hole in my previous neighborhood in Denver, and was just as walkable as Rue Lafayette. You’re going to face a conundrum with the arrival of Hamburger Mary – it’s a GLBT-friendly (+) chain (-) focused on meat (-) investing in an up and coming neihborhood (+) . . . .
The two critical things are whether (or not) some one or some entity is going to be a good neighbor and whether (or not) some one or some entity is willing to invest in, and hopefully better, an existing neighborhood. There are examples of single-location problem properties (on Washington, I remember previous posts about a cigar bar and nightclubs [Lush?]), just like there are examples of pretty good chains (Dwewy’s Pizza and Onesto Pizza, to name just two).
My wife and I support and patronize restaurants based on their overall package – food quality, service and environment. The type of ownership – single location and owner, small chain, large chain, local franchisee versus corporately-owned location – rarely factor into the decision. This week, we dined at both Square One and the Schlafly Taproom, picked up coffee at Sump and Starbucks, and I’ve grabbed lunch at Hardee’s and Taco Bell. I think the critical thing is that we’re supporting local businesses, of all types, keeping people employed, while we get the kind of sustenance we’re loking for, at that moment.
Labels are dangerous. Every chain started out with a single location, in some neighborhood. Trattoria Marcella, in my ‘hood, announced this week that they will be opening a second location in Ballwin. I guess this changes them from a PC “neighborhood” restaurant into an “evil” chain restaurant. The first Chipotle filled a vacant hole in my previous neighborhood in Denver, and was just as walkable as Rue Lafayette. You’re going to face a conundrum with the arrival of Hamburger Mary – it’s a GLBT-friendly (+) chain (-) focused on meat (-) investing in an up and coming neihborhood (+) . . . .
The two critical things are whether (or not) some one or some entity is going to be a good neighbor and whether (or not) some one or some entity is willing to invest in, and hopefully better, an existing neighborhood. There are examples of single-location problem properties (on Washington, I remember previous posts about a cigar bar and nightclubs [Lush?]), just like there are examples of pretty good chains (Dwewy’s Pizza and Onesto Pizza, to name just two).
My wife and I support and patronize restaurants based on their overall package – food quality, service and environment. The type of ownership – single location and owner, small chain, large chain, local franchisee versus corporately-owned location – rarely factor into the decision. This week, we dined at both Square One and the Schlafly Taproom, picked up coffee at Sump and Starbucks, and I’ve grabbed lunch at Hardee’s and Taco Bell. I think the critical thing is that we’re supporting local businesses, of all types, keeping people employed, while we get the kind of sustenance we’re loking for, at that moment.
Not every chain originated as a cute mom & pop. Corporations come up with new theme chains all the time. True, Hamburger Mary’s is a franchise chain now with a total of ten locations. And a local place having a second of third location is different than Applebee’s.
Chipotle started out like a typical neighborhood restaurant and had expanded to maybe a dozen locations around Denver before McDonald’s bought in and expanded the concept exponentially. The underlying question is should success be penalized? Good ideas get repeated, bad ones go out of business. With restaurants, you can either expand at the original location (up to a point) or you can open additional ones.
I agree, cookie-cutter answers don’t have the same neighborhood vibe as a single-location, one-owner operation, but until we come up with something less arbitrary than “chain” to divide “good” and “bad”, I’m not comfortable with using that label to define any business, especially a smaller one.
i agree somewhat, but when you choose to patronize a corporation, while you are supporting local jobs, how much of your money actually stays local and how much goes to the centralized corporation headquartered across the country?
It all depends on how the deal is structured. Is it a local franchisee paying a set percentage of gross sales back to a corporation, or is it a store directly owned by the corporation? And most major corporations have multiple stockholders, scattered around the country. Yes, they’ll have a headquarters somewhere, but the profits flow back to the individual shareholders in the form of dividends.
Having owned my own business, I get the concept of wanting to help my neighbor with their business. The challenge comes in balancing that desire with wanting to get the best for myself. Along with places I listed that my wife and I visited last week, we also tried a locally-owned place (that will remain nameless) that failed the “you only have one chance to make a good first impression” test. Their menu sounded good and the place was nice enough, but the food came out overcooked, the bathrooms were dirty and the service was not very good. This has little to do with what type of entity owns the place or where the profits (if any) may be going back to, and it has a whole lot to do with bad management. The local owner may want to blame unfair competition from some out-of-state corporation when, in reality, it lies solely in either his own incompetence or laziness.
The restaurant business is brutal. It takes a pile of money to open one, and you’re depending on the whims of the public to show up and spend their money. Employee turnover is high and the hours are long. And when you only have one location, and you’ve been open for a while, like Rue Lafayette has, there’s a tendency for you to fall off of people’s radar. (They were on our let’s-check-them-out list for a while, but I’d forgotten about them until this post.) It had absolutely nothing to do with chain versus non-chain, and nothing to do with what they have to offer, it had and has everything to do with many other choices being available, many closer to home.
The real advantage that chain restaurants have over independents is a comfort factor, they’re a known entity. They don’t require a lot of research and you’re pretty much guaranteed an adequate dining experience, whether you’re in St. Louis, Des Moines or Portland. For some (many?) people, that’s good enough (or actually desired). I like variety and I appreciate quality, but that takes research, on Gut Check, Urbanspoon, Yelp, Living Social, Groupon, etc, and a willingness to be occasionally disappointed, instead of relying solely on broadcast advertising.
In theory, the restaurants on the Watson Road corridor are walkable from our house. In reality, we’re more likely to drive, which expands our dining “neighborhood” to include everything from Valley Park to Lafayette Square to points beyond. There are literally hundreds of options, and you gotta offer something outstanding to attract our attention. Steve loves to throw out Applebee’s as competition – it barely gets our attention, and neither does Olive Garden, Dead Lobster, Outback, Buffalo Wild Wings, etc., etc. Developers like them because of their financials (they’re more likely to survive for the term of their lease than an independent start-up), but it has little to do with their actual quality as a restaurant. Is this “fair”? It all depends on your perspective and your priorities . . . .
Not every chain originated as a cute mom & pop. Corporations come up with new theme chains all the time. True, Hamburger Mary’s is a franchise chain now with a total of ten locations. And a local place having a second of third location is different than Applebee’s.
Chipotle started out like a typical neighborhood restaurant and had expanded to maybe a dozen locations around Denver before McDonald’s bought in and expanded the concept exponentially. The underlying question is should success be penalized? Good ideas get repeated, bad ones go out of business. With restaurants, you can either expand at the original location (up to a point) or you can open additional ones.
I agree, cookie-cutter answers don’t have the same neighborhood vibe as a single-location, one-owner operation, but until we come up with something less arbitrary than “chain” to divide “good” and “bad”, I’m not comfortable with using that label to define any business, especially a smaller one.
Onesto’s owner, Vito Racanelli, recently opened Mad Tomato in Clayton. Niche continues to expand beyond Benton Park. Does ownership of multiple locations create a “chain”, or do they need to have exactly the same name and look?
No, a local person having different restaurants isn’t even remotely a chain, from Wikipedia: “A restaurant chain is a set of related restaurants with the same name in many different locations that are either under shared corporate ownership (e.g., In-N-Out Burgers in the U.S.) or franchising agreements. Typically, the restaurants within a chain are built to a standard format (thru architectural prototype development)and offer a standard menu.”
What about St. Louis Bread Company? Â They are a chain and most neighborhoods are glad to have them.
What about St. Louis Bread Company? They are a chain and most neighborhoods are glad to have them.
Thriving businesses that resemble suburbia are not welcome in Steve’s world. Gas stations that replace vacant buildings are somehow bad.
Thankfully Panera (Bread Co) hasn’t built their suburban drive thru prototype in St. Louis.
Yes they have – at Chippeqwa & Lansdowne . . .
They recently altered a building built in 1974 to add drive-thru service. They’ve been in this same building for many years without a drive-thru. Like other chains, Panera has a standard prototype that is built in greenfield locations.
So adding a drive-thru to an existing building is somehow OK, but constructing a new building that includes a drive-thru is not?! Drive-thru’s are inherently anti-urban – they don’t encourage walking, biking or the use of public transit. It doesn’t matter if they’re on a new building or an old one!
No, I stated they hadn’t built their suburban prototype in the city. New Bread Co locations on Forest Park, on South Broadway and in Loughborough Commons are not their free-standing prototype stores I’ve visited elsewhere. Regardless they are a chain with a uniform look & menu from location to location.
Thriving businesses that resemble suburbia are not welcome in Steve’s world. Gas stations that replace vacant buildings are somehow bad.
Thankfully Panera (Bread Co) hasn’t built their suburban drive thru prototype in St. Louis.
Yes they have – at Chippeqwa & Lansdowne . . .
They recently altered a building built in 1974 to add drive-thru service. They’ve been in this same building for many years without a drive-thru. Like other chains, Panera has a standard prototype that is built in greenfield locations.
The drive thru must have been an attempt to compete with Starbucks across the street. Â Wish they’d never done it.Â
The drive thru must have been an attempt to compete with Starbucks across the street. Wish they’d never done it.
Oh yes the recent Starbucks with a drive-thru lane but lacking an ADA access route for pedestrians.
The Bread Company here doesn’t have one either, and none was added when the drive-thru was built.
Few buildings from 1974 have an ADA accessible route. One should have been created when the Bread Co moved into the building a number of years ago. I will pay them a visit soon. That fact still doesn’t make the nearly 40 year old building their new construction prototype.
That wasn’t my point (prototype). My point was given the investment required to add a drive-thru, why was nothing done to improve ADA compliance? (The designated accessible parking spaces were even moved FURTHER away from the main entrance to accomodate the drive-thru!) If you’re going to (rightly so) harp on new construction not complying, you should hold owners of existing buildings to the same standards.
I have no shortage of places to hold accountabe, as I said I will pay them a visit. I agree that when construction is done that’s the time to bring older properties into compliance.
I just looked on Google Streetview and see the grade change. They need to construct a switch-back ramp to get access from the sidewalk to entrance. Panera doesn’t own the building, they are a tenant. I don’t know if this location is company-owned or operated by a franchisee.
Oh yes the recent Starbucks with a drive-thru lane but lacking an ADA access route for pedestrians.
i agree somewhat, but when you choose to patronize a corporation, while you are supporting local jobs, how much of your money actually stays local and how much goes to the centralized corporation headquartered across the country?
Not totally on topic, but here is an interesting link (and in general, an interesting site):
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/2/the-cost-of-auto-orientation.html
Not totally on topic, but here is an interesting link (and in general, an interesting site):
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/1/2/the-cost-of-auto-orientation.html
It all depends on how the deal is structured. Is it a local franchisee paying a set percentage of gross sales back to a corporation, or is it a store directly owned by the corporation? And most major corporations have multiple stockholders, scattered around the country. Yes, they’ll have a headquarters somewhere, but the profits flow back to the individual shareholders in the form of dividends.
Having owned my own business, I get the concept of wanting to help my neighbor with their business. The challenge comes in balancing that desire with wanting to get the best for myself. Along with places I listed that my wife and I visited last week, we also tried a locally-owned place (that will remain nameless) that failed the “you only have one chance to make a good first impression” test. Their menu sounded good and the place was nice enough, but the food came out overcooked, the bathrooms were dirty and the service was not very good. This has little to do with what type of entity owns the place or where the profits (if any) may be going back to, and it has a whole lot to do with bad management. The local owner may want to blame unfair competition from some out-of-state corporation when, in reality, it lies solely in either his own incompetence or laziness.
The restaurant business is brutal. It takes a pile of money to open one, and you’re depending on the whims of the public to show up and spend their money. Employee turnover is high and the hours are long. And when you only have one location, and you’ve been open for a while, like Rue Lafayette has, there’s a tendency for you to fall off of people’s radar. (They were on our let’s-check-them-out list for a while, but I’d forgotten about them until this post.) It had absolutely nothing to do with chain versus non-chain, and nothing to do with what they have to offer, it had and has everything to do with many other choices being available, many closer to home.
The real advantage that chain restaurants have over independents is a comfort factor, they’re a known entity. They don’t require a lot of research and you’re pretty much guaranteed an adequate dining experience, whether you’re in St. Louis, Des Moines or Portland. For some (many?) people, that’s good enough (or actually desired). I like variety and I appreciate quality, but that takes research, on Gut Check, Urbanspoon, Yelp, Living Social, Groupon, etc, and a willingness to be occasionally disappointed, instead of relying solely on broadcast advertising.
In theory, the restaurants on the Watson Road corridor are walkable from our house. In reality, we’re more likely to drive, which expands our dining “neighborhood” to include everything from Valley Park to Lafayette Square to points beyond. There are literally hundreds of options, and you gotta offer something outstanding to attract our attention. Steve loves to throw out Applebee’s as competition – it barely gets our attention, and neither does Olive Garden, Dead Lobster, Outback, Buffalo Wild Wings, etc., etc. Developers like them because of their financials (they’re more likely to survive for the term of their lease than an independent start-up), but it has little to do with their actual quality as a restaurant. Is this “fair”? It all depends on your perspective and your priorities . . . .
So adding a drive-thru to an existing building is somehow OK, but constructing a new building that includes a drive-thru is not?! Drive-thru’s are inherently anti-urban – they don’t encourage walking, biking or the use of public transit. It doesn’t matter if they’re on a new building or an old one!
No, I stated they hadn’t built their suburban prototype in the city. New Bread Co locations on Forest Park, on South Broadway and in Loughborough Commons are not their free-standing prototype stores I’ve visited elsewhere. Regardless they are a chain with a uniform look & menu from location to location.
As a long time food service manager, I can tell you that most of the money stays local….what goes to the corporate office is the profit or franchise fee, and depending on the type, it isn’t that much. You may think some of these restaurants are pulling tens of thousands out of the local economy, but most don’t.  Many ‘chains’ will actually operate at a loss both during the first year of opening to cover the start up expenses,  and then again at the other end of the cycle whereas a mom & pop will open and close pronto. Chains have the advantage of leverage not only in purchase power, but also in profit/losses.Â
Having said that, the only time we really eat chains is at lunch (McD’s, Bread Co, or Arby’s) or winter dinner (the occasional Mac Grill (hate olive garden and applebees) or Cheesecake Fac). During the spring/summer/fall we prefer to eat outdoors for dinner…and happily, they are all local…boat house, cullpeppers (or is that a chain?), etc.
When we go out of town, we always make it a point of eating local, never a chain unless it’s a McD’s on the side of the highway. But since we love to take the state highways versus the interstate, even that is a rarity. We love to see what other cities put out and have discovered so many delicious places to eat.
As a long time food service manager, I can tell you that most of the money stays local….what goes to the corporate office is the profit or franchise fee, and depending on the type, it isn’t that much. You may think some of these restaurants are pulling tens of thousands out of the local economy, but most don’t. Many ‘chains’ will actually operate at a loss both during the first year of opening to cover the start up expenses, and then again at the other end of the cycle whereas a mom & pop will open and close pronto. Chains have the advantage of leverage not only in purchase power, but also in profit/losses.
Having said that, the only time we really eat chains is at lunch (McD’s, Bread Co, or Arby’s) or winter dinner (the occasional Mac Grill (hate olive garden and applebees) or Cheesecake Fac). During the spring/summer/fall we prefer to eat outdoors for dinner…and happily, they are all local…boat house, cullpeppers (or is that a chain?), etc.
When we go out of town, we always make it a point of eating local, never a chain unless it’s a McD’s on the side of the highway. But since we love to take the state highways versus the interstate, even that is a rarity. We love to see what other cities put out and have discovered so many delicious places to eat.
The Bread Company here doesn’t have one either, and none was added when the drive-thru was built.
Few buildings from 1974 have an ADA accessible route. One should have been created when the Bread Co moved into the building a number of years ago. I will pay them a visit soon. That fact still doesn’t make the nearly 40 year old building their new construction prototype.
That wasn’t my point (prototype). My point was given the investment required to add a drive-thru, why was nothing done to improve ADA compliance? (The designated accessible parking spaces were even moved FURTHER away from the main entrance to accomodate the drive-thru!) If you’re going to (rightly so) harp on new construction not complying, you should hold owners of existing buildings to the same standards.
I have no shortage of places to hold accountabe, as I said I will pay them a visit. I agree that when construction is done that’s the time to bring older properties into compliance.
I just looked on Google Streetview and see the grade change. They need to construct a switch-back ramp to get access from the sidewalk to entrance. Panera doesn’t own the building, they are a tenant. I don’t know if this location is company-owned or operated by a franchisee.