Dining Forecast: Gourmet Takeout’s In; Cajun on Wane

Hello gourmet supermarket takeout, goodby Cajun food.

Those are some of the latest predictions from Laventhol & Horwath, an accounting firm that annually produces a study of restaurant operations in trend-setting California.

Restaurants in the state will see a moderate increase in business next year, will place more emphasis on improving service and will try to control costs by sharing facilities, such as kitchens or parking lots, said Robert T. Patterson, managing partner of the Los Angeles office of Laventhol & Horwath. On the fun side, “brew pubs,” where a house beer is brewed on the premises, will become more popular, Patterson said, adding that last year’s burst of ‘50s-style diners and Australian restaurants will continue.

“In the last two years, (California restaurants) have done a little bit better than the year before,” Patterson said.

But California restaurants that once were more profitable on average than restaurants nationwide now are much closer to the national average, he said. “So competition has definitely heated up to the point where the real premium profit margins that were once earned in the state are much more difficult to achieve,” he said.

Overall, restaurants in the state will see a sales increase next year that keeps pace with inflation, but the fastest-growing segments will change, he said. Fast-food restaurants have been big winners in past years, but consumers are becoming more interested in high-quality food and are using an evening out at a restaurant as an “entertainment occasion,” he said.

“We see the white tablecloth restaurants and the upper-end restaurants will come out of their sleepy pattern of the past several years and their sales growth curve could be comparable to or faster than fast food,” Patterson said. But owners “need to take high-end restaurants and make them less stuffy” to bring in new customers.”

Cajun Cools Off

The same flight to quality will create a boom in gourmet takeout food from supermarkets and could hurt run-of-the-mill home delivery, which flourished when high interest rates on big mortgages kept many consumers in the house, Patterson said.

“The grocery store gourmet counters are proliferating and doing well,” he said. “Consumers are getting a little bit disaffected with home delivery because there is a greater appreciation of what quality is.”

Even though consumers seem to be very interested in all kinds of spicy food, the once-hot Cajun food trend is waning, Patterson said.

“We feel that’s been overdone and done badly. Not in every case, but in enough cases that the consumer is turned off because of bad examples,” he said. “I don’t think that the well-implemented Cajun restaurants will close their doors,” but they may diversify menus.

Restaurants that have concentrated on atmosphere and product are finding that they now must focus on “the hardest part of the equation”--service, Patterson said.

Restaurants must learn to manage what Patterson calls “moments of truth,” or points when customers come in contact with staff, from making reservations to parking to paying the check.

Sharing Facilities

“You break down points of contact and make sure each is managed,” Patterson said. “If you blow a moment of truth but the employee fixes it . . . the customer’s impression may be better. He may have a fonder memory of how he was treated.”

To manage costs, many of which are difficult to pass along to consumers because of increasing resistance to price increases, more and more restaurants will try to share facilities in some way, Patterson said. Restaurants with different peak hours could share a kitchen, for example.

“A cookie operation inside a hamburger stand would seem to be a complementary combination,” Patterson said. “You’re running more volume through the same physical plant.”

New types of restaurants frequently get their start in California, and Laventhol & Horwath sees that continuing.

“We see the brew pubs as a concept that has worked in other major metropolitan areas, but it still very underdone in Los Angeles,” Patterson said. “We still think that the diner concept has some legs, is under-represented in the area.”

As Laventhol & Horwath predicted last year, several Australian restaurants did open their doors during the year. But Patterson said he was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the cuisine.

“We thought it would be lots of beer, Australian accents and kangaroo tail stew,” he said.