Never rest easy
Even when a brand finds success and infiltrates every nook and cranny of a business, ongoing work is needed to keep it fresh.
Take, for example, Mitchell’s original Ocean Club restaurant in Easton Town Center.
“We closed the Ocean Club, which was doing about $4 million a year in business, and totally reconcepted it,” Mitchell says.
Management decided the restaurant’s whimsical underwater theme came off as kind of cold, he says, and the menu needed more beef items so it would appeal equally to fish lovers and steak lovers.
“We opened Mitchell’s Ocean Club two months later, and it has been a phenomenal success,” Mitchell says. “It resonates with people. It’s tracking to do $7 million in ’07. And not only did we take a restaurant that was moderately successful and make it very successful, but we feel we’ve birthed a new concept. Maybe that becomes a $100 million brand.”
In similar fashion, Mitchell recently raised $3 million through a capital campaign to remodel additional restaurants in his ever-expanding chain, some of which date back more than a decade.
“It was imperative that we put that money back into our system to maintain the quality of our dining rooms and our physical spaces,” he says.
“Because part and parcel of that brand promise is we want to have great-looking interiors and we want to exude quality within those interiors when you walk into the space.”