Phil Roberts has feelings.
Take the one that overcame the cofounder and president of Edina-based Parasole Restaurant Holdings in January 2007. He was getting edgy about the economy, about dining and leisure, about people’s continued willingness to pay $20 for appetizers and $12 for a glass of wine.
“The markets were unsettled,” Roberts says. “Business travel had been on its way down for many years. I felt that the fine dining sector wasn’t thinking far enough out, and I wanted to hedge, specifically, against the $100-a-head steak dinner. So what I decided to do was a steakhouse with nice trappings but a $45 average check.
“I mean, you take the Morton’s customer whose company is cutting back on entertainment expenses,” he continues. “He’s not going to start going to Outback and sitting next to some fat guy in sweatpants. I wanted to give him a better option.”
Roberts called that option Pittsburgh Blue, after the way hardcore steelworkers eat steak—charred on the outside and still raw inside—and he put the flagship store in Maple Grove, a suburb with easy highway access and an exploding population of young, white-collar families, but only chain restaurants lining the newly fabricated streets. Again, this was based on intuition: his sense of who might join downgraded business travelers and flock there to eat.
“I looked at Maple Grove’s restaurant row and it was Olive Garden and Famous Dave’s, all the usual suspects,” he says. “My suspicion was that the people who lived in the McMansions were probably secretly embarrassed about the restaurants defining their neighborhood. I mean, who stands up and says ‘I’m an Olive Garden kind of guy’? They would want something smart that validates their choice of where to live.”
Pittsburgh Blue opened in September 2007. There were tile floors, a snarling bull’s head bust over the fireplace, and a menu that included pigs-in-a-blanket, salads strewn with bacon, mammoth chunks of dry-aged meat, and cream-drenched side dishes that would serve a table of four. A filet mignon went for $29.95, the New York Strip for a hefty but sustainable $36.95. By week three, people were lining up to get in, and Parasole was predicting a “run rate” (restaurant-speak for the annual gross profit prediction, based on two weeks’ take) of more than $7 million for its first year. That was optimistic, Roberts says now, but the actual figure was a little over $6 million.
While Cheesecake Factory, Applebee’s, and Romano’s Macaroni Grill were shuttering stores in the suburbs, Parasole’s development team began scouting new locations for Pittsburgh Blue. Roberts has feelings, yes, but after using them to develop (so far) 11 restaurant brands that have approximately 115 stores across the country, he’s also keenly aware of how to translate them into revenues.
“What happened in this recession,” he says, “was that franchise casual—which is where Applebee’s fits in—was pushed down into quick-service, such as McDonald’s. And fine dining was pushed down into a category I call ‘polished casual.’ Only there was nothing there. It was a hole in the market so big you could drive a truck through. Pittsburgh Blue filled that hole.”
