Revived Sizzler Restaurants Stake Their Future on Service

There is no time in my life that seems freer, and no trip I enjoy more, than taking the car and driving someplace in the West.

That preference goes back to trips to Yosemite with my parents in 1947, around California in 1950 and, best of all, through the Western states--the Columbia River, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, Denver, southwestern Colorado and the Grand Canyon--in 1952.

It’s the best means of seeing new things in the most informal way, and it hasn’t changed much in half a century. It isn’t as cheap as it used to be, although it remains a comparative bargain.

Also, in an age when calls to customer service often find businesses unresponsive, dealing with motels, restaurants and gas stations seems wonderfully simple.

Such trips enthuse many of us. The American Automobile Assn. estimates that 84% of all trips of more than 100 miles this summer will be by motor vehicle.

And not a trip, such as one I took recently to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., goes by without my forming fresh impressions of our economy’s burgeoning service sector, some completely unexpected.

It’s not all great, of course. I was taken aback in driving up the eastern side of the Sierra to see that gasoline at both service stations in Bridgeport in Mono County was $1.99 a gallon for regular unleaded.

Fortunately, I had enough gas left to go on 61 miles to Minden, Nev., where it was $1.17 a gallon.

The Ashland festival is always good. I have stayed at the Cowslip’s Belle bed and breakfast there 14 straight years and would be a fool to change. And I had recommended the Drakesbad guest ranch in an isolated part of Lassen National Park to our travel writer, Chris Reynolds, three years ago. He visited and called it his “favorite U.S. destination” for 1996. It’s as good as ever. The only trouble is getting in. Often, reservations must be made a year in advance.

The most unexpected event of the trip, though, was certainly a positive one: getting reacquainted with a common part of many Westerners’ automobile trips, the Sizzler restaurants.

It’s a story of the revival of a chain I had thought was pretty much lost. In June 1996, Sizzler went into bankruptcy. And before it came out in late 1997, 370 of 721 restaurants had been closed.

Restaurants often have a hard time emerging successfully from bankruptcy.

The new CEO of Sizzler, Chuck Boppell, says that in this case, Sizzler paid “100 cents on the dollar to all our creditors.”

But, he remarks, “bankruptcies get lots of front-end attention. People have to be reintroduced when they are over.”

Driving down California 99 in the San Joaquin Valley at the end of the trip, by Bakersfield I was ravenous for a steak.

At the California Avenue exit, a Sizzler was right there, on Real Road. Without much optimism, I tried it.

But I was surprised. No more of the dreary food stations of my last visit to the chain, years ago.

The restaurant was full of people. I ordered and paid at the same time, got a list of my items and picked a table. In a minute, a server arrived, looked at my order, which was already cooking, and served me an iced tea and a salad. In 10 minutes, another server delivered the steak--a rib eye--and baked potato.

Altogether, I was in the restaurant just 40 minutes, and when I was through with my meal, I had already paid the $16 bill, so I could depart without further delay.

I stopped only to ask who ran the place, so I could try to learn how Sizzler had been turned around.

A manager referred me to Gary Myers, a franchisee with 18 of Sizzler’s present 266 restaurants in the United States; the chain has another 84 outlets abroad.

When I visited Myers at his Temecula office, he drove me to his Escondido restaurant as a demonstration of what he is trying to do.

Despite my criticism of various businesses in this column, I’m always ready to admire those that embrace new ideas and put customer service at the top.

That’s what, it appears, they are doing at Sizzler. They have moved away from the buffet, toward the kitchen, which allows them to cook products to order. They have upgraded their beef to USDA choice and added many exotic shrimp dishes to the menu. They are constantly experimenting in other ways.

One important concept is speed. By taking the order and collecting the money at the beginning, Boppell thinks, Sizzler has “a quick service environment,” cutting time at the start by five or 10 minutes and at the end by the same, a real convenience on a driving trip.

Boppell remarks, “Before the bankruptcy, our restaurants were too expensive, requiring too high a volume and not well clustered to take advantage of advertising.

“We are now selectively building again,” he says.

Despite my $16 tastes, Boppell said Sizzler has positioned itself for an average $8.24 individual bill, compared to $5 to $6 at fast-food restaurants. Sizzler does not consider itself in the fast-food category.

In the time I spent with Myers, he ranged widely over topics of interest to all who rely on the service sector:

* “Our employees have got to wear a smile, be able to put their hair up. No ponytails. We’re looking for someone to communicate with our guests. . . . It’s Disneyland all the way.”

* “When a server comes by with one of our sizzling platters, it makes a very fine impression.”

* “If you serve a higher-quality product, they’ll pay for it. We’re producing hand-dipped ice cream. We took the soft ice cream out of the dining room.”

* “We’ve put in more booths and have fewer open tables. We have a private room. So some Rotary clubs come in for lunch.”

Myers asks his managers to read three books: “Developing the Leaders Around You,” by John Maxwell; “See You at the Top,” by Zig Ziglar; and “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard.

At the Escondido restaurant, we ran into Christine Becker, a corporate inspector. She lauded Myers, saying, “Most times, if I notice something wrong and tell him, it’s corrected by the time I leave.”

I felt that this driving trip, like so many others, had taught me something.

Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventures at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at: ken.reich@latimes.com.