Disney to Open Restaurant in Southland Mall

Walt Disney Co. is branching out into the restaurant business with the planned opening of the Disney Restaurant next month.

The company will open its first fast-food restaurant April 21 at the Montclair Plaza, a regional shopping mall about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. Alongside the restaurant, the company will open one of its Disney Stores, a highly successful chain the company began three years ago.

“I think the idea of opening a restaurant along with the store is novel and very creative,” Sarah Stack, a retail analyst with the securities firm Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards, said Friday.

“Since Disney has the experience of both selling merchandise at the stores and parks and feeding people at the parks, this seems a logical off-site extension,” Stack said.

“My sense is that it will be difficult to come out of there without eating something at the restaurant and buying something at the store.”

The move comes on the heels of Disney’s decision late last year to go into the record business by starting its own label. The company has relied heavily in recent years on using one area of business to promote another, what Disney calls taking advantage of the “synergies” between its businesses.

The approach appears to be working, as Disney has posted record earnings through major expansions of its filmmaking business, parks and consumer products area. In the company’s latest quarter ended Dec. 31, Disney earned $174.4 million on sales of $1.3 billion, both records.

A spokesman for Burbank-based Disney had no comment on the plans for the Disney Restaurant. However, at the Montclair Plaza, there are signs at the store site, now under construction, seeking employees for the restaurant.

“We’re seeking energetic, dependable people to work in the Disney Restaurant,” one sign read. “The Disney Restaurant will be an exciting new concept in a fun setting and will be opening in Montclair Plaza in April.”

The store and restaurant will occupy about 11,000 square feet. The stores, which sell a wide range of Disney items ranging from videos to talking Mickey Mouse T-shirts, generally occupy 3,000 to 4,000 square feet.

A Disney source said the restaurant concept will be rolled out slowly, much like the Disney Store concept was in 1987. Disney executives said at the annual meeting earlier this year that they expected to open about 150 more stores during the next two years.

Last year, Disney officers said the store chain was posting yearly sales of $800 per square foot, better than double the national average for retailers. The stores feature movie sets with Disney characters and employees costumed in cardigan sweaters.

The stores also include strong promotion of other Disney products. A rear-wall screen plays a continuous loop of excerpts from Disney movies, and there are telephones for customers to subscribe to the Disney Channel or purchase tickets for the Disney parks.

“There’s an emotional attachment to Disney that goes much deeper than most other retailers,” Stack said. “Everyone has a history with Disney, so it’s not as if the company has to develop brand awareness.”

One of Disney’s theme-park competitors, Knott’s Berry Farm in Brea, is also moving into the business of operating restaurants. Knott’s will begin construction this summer of a Mrs. Knott’s Restaurant & Bakery in Irvine, with a December opening scheduled, spokesman Stuart Zanville said.

The restaurant, however, will be a family-style operation seating about 225 and patterned after the Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant at the theme park, which draws about 5 million visitors a year.

“We’ve been talking internally about opening an off-site restaurant for about 10 years,” Zanville said. “We’re not doing this to compete with the Disney Restaurant.”

Zanville said Knott’s is exploring the possibility of opening other restaurants in the Southern California area, but he said it would be doubtful that the company will go beyond that region.