GOURMET TAKEOUT : ‘Sun Food’ Eclipses Pizza as Supermarkets and Restaurants Make It Easier to Eat In by Going Out

About four nights a week for the last 2 1/2 years, ever since the Bristol Farms specialty food store opened in her South Pasadena neighborhood, Diana Minning has stopped by to sample and take home pasta salads, baked goods and entrees such as lemon chicken or barbecued ribs from the store’s Cuisine to Go counter.

“It’s great to come here, especially when I’m tired, to pick up something for dinner,” said Minning, a fashion model who recently portrayed an “after” dieter in a Weight Watchers advertising campaign. “Everything is fresh, fresh, fresh.”

On chi-chi Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, gourmet takeout shops are springing up like shiitake mushrooms in a Japanese forest. And on South La Brea Avenue, the innovative City Restaurant, following the lead of trendy eateries on Melrose and elsewhere in Los Angeles, recently launched City to Go specials. Customers pick up meal platters featuring shredded duck salad and Angus rib eye steaks, complete with lap tray.

All this activity is a sign of one of the hottest concepts in food retailing: “gourmet” takeout from restaurants, supermarkets, food boutiques and even fashionable delivery services that save customers the trouble of picking up the food by carrying restaurant meals to them.

Not Necessarily Expensive

Gourmet takeout goes well beyond the greasy, cold pizza cartons and soggy Chinese carry-out boxes of yore or such traditional supermarket deli fare as potato salad, cole slaw and overdone ribs that once constituted the sole options for stay-at-home eaters who did not want to cook.

As young professionals have started building families and as their earning power has increased, many have grown bored with the traditional burgers, fries and fried chicken that were mainstays of their youth, when fast-food joints and drive-through operations were novel and satisfied the special needs of parents of baby boomers.

Observers note that the takeout trend, which has been building steadily in the last five years, is further indication of changing life styles, of Americans’ desire to spend more time at home (where they’re surrounded by microwave ovens and videocassette recorders) and of the improving economic status of a broad cross-section of single workers and two-income couples who willingly pay a premium for convenience and quality.

But, industry observers agree, “gourmet” takeout does not necessarily mean pricey haute cuisine. After all, even a McDonald’s meal (quarter-pounder with extra-large fries and extra-large milkshake) costs $4.35 with tax. And some upscale takeout meals can be had for not much more.

Opened Second Outlet

“People want to rent a movie, get some great food and enjoy their homes and be with their kids,” said Renee Diamond, who three years ago opened the 7th Heaven takeout shop at 7th and Montana Avenue in Santa Monica with her husband, Scott. “They’re healthy and sophisticated.” They don’t want, she said, to be taking home burgers and fries.

“Gourmet takeout is really taking off in urban areas,” said Joan Lang, executive editor of Restaurant Business magazine, a trade publication in New York.

According to Find/SVP, a New York marketing research firm, Americans spent a hefty $62.4 billion on prepared takeout foods in the year ended in August, 1987, (including meals at fast-food outlets such as McDonald’s and Taco Bell). Such spending is expected to accelerate at a compounded annual rate of 12% for the next few years, surpassing $100 billion by 1992, the firm said. All told, Americans are spending about 15% of their food dollars on takeout offerings from restaurants, groceries, convenience stores and independent gourmet shops and delicatessens.

At 7th Heaven, which specializes in American-style “comfort food” to go, ranging from Louisiana baked chicken to corn bread and pies, frequent customers include celebrities Carol Burnett, Jeff Bridges, Michael Keaton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Jackson Browne and Daryl Hannah, not to mention “regular folk” from the neighborhood, according to Renee Diamond.

Business got so brisk that the store recently opened a second takeout shop, two doors down, called Divine Prime, featuring seafood and Southwestern tapas. Ditto Cafe Montana, a 4-year-old operation whose owners have just expanded a few blocks away with Babalu, offering “spontaneous” takeout cuisine with an island influence.

“We’ve been hearing a lot through our restaurant that there’s a need for other (options) where the food isn’t overpriced (and is) in a nice medium range,” said Edmund Silkaitis, co-owner with his wife, Ausra, of Cafe Montana. Their response was to open Babalu, serving food inspired by “islands all over the world--sun food,” Silkaitis said. The menu includes Caribbean-style chicken with spicy fruit sauce, crab cakes, a Mediterranean salad and vegetable quesadilla, with no item priced at more than $10; the place is primarily geared to takeout, although it has seating for 25.

One hallmark of gourmet takeout places is that most of the offerings are made on the premises. Babalu, for example, grinds its own beef and makes its own hamburger buns, complete with sesame seeds.

Quality Alternative

To be sure, “gourmet” takeout means different things to different folks. To Silkaitis, it means simply that all items are made daily with fresh ingredients, that nothing is processed or frozen and that the offerings are not mass-produced fast food, although, he hastens to add, “we have enough people to make it fast.” Lang of Restaurant Business views the category as “upscale” pasta salads, sushi and prepared entrees to go “that are kind of sophisticated.”

In supermarkets, which last year accounted for 23% of the nation’s takeout sales, the fastest-growing department is the hot deli counter. Vons, the El Monte-based grocery chain, has chefs in about 40 of its 190 stores who prepare salads and entrees each day, but the chain shuns the use of the word gourmet . “For some people it’s a turn-on, and for others it’s a turn-off,” said Stuart A. Rosenthal, executive vice president. “It has something of a stuffy connotation.”

Instead, the company considers its offerings to be ready to eat or ready to heat. “We’re positioning ourselves as a quality alternative to the traditional fast food,” Rosenthal said. “They are our competition every bit as much as Lucky and Alpha Beta and Ralphs and Albertsons.”

Takeout foods prepared on the premises also provide the potential for hefty profits, compared to packaged goods, the grocery business’ mainstay. “It’s a very high profit margin relative to packaged groceries,” Rosenthal said. “On the other hand, it can be very labor intensive.” Even so, the gross margin (without consideration of payroll and equipment costs, is likely to be 2 to 2 1/2 times that of the margin on dry packaged goods.

Upscale Bristol Farms, with groceries in South Pasadena and the Rolling Hills Estates section of Palos Verdes, is going all out this year to woo Hollywood Bowl fans, a market that manager David Gronsky views as largely untapped. On 24 hours’ notice, the stores prepare handsome picnics at $8.75 to $13.50 that customers may pick up on their way to the performance.

Gronsky, whose father, Irving, was a founder of Bristol Farms, said takeout has grown “by leaps and bounds” and now accounts for about 20% of the stores’ sales.