Consumers Have Reservations, but Not for Dinner
Suddenly, some of the toughest restaurant seats in town can be had with little or no wait.
At Le Dome, the famed West Hollywood eatery, dinner traffic has plunged as much as 75% in recent days. So owner Eddie Kerkhofs is offering a Belgian meal for one night at half price.
“The past week has been the slowest one in Le Dome’s 24-year history,” said Kerkhofs, who had same-day dinner reservations available Friday afternoon.
So did Pinot Provence, a French restaurant in Costa Mesa where reservations for Friday nights normally must be made at least two or three days in advance. But these aren’t normal times, said hostess Cain Luong. “We’re keeping afloat,” she said.
Even before the terrorist attack, chichi restaurants were facing flagging business as consumer confidence faltered and companies reined in business travel and expense accounts. But now, it’s gotten so bad that some eateries are resorting to discounts and other promotions to coax shaky consumers.
In recent days, restaurants of all price ranges have been hurting, from McDonald’s on up, as people have stayed glued to their TV sets. But it’s the expensive ones that have suffered the most.
“People are trading down,” said Hal Sieling, a restaurant consultant in Carlsbad.
And so some upscale restaurants are swimming downstream.
At Delmonico’s Lobster House in Beverly Hills, business was so slow that one of the three dining rooms was cordoned off and the restaurant operated with a skeleton crew of waiters and busboys all of last week, General Manager Chase Hicks said. With sales off about 40% at the Beverly Hills restaurant and 20% at the Encino location, he said, reservations, even for Saturday night, were plentiful.
In July, Delmonico’s added lower-priced offerings and slashed prices, said Hicks, who hasn’t ruled out another round of cuts. In the aftermath of the terrorist tragedy, the restaurant recently ran its first-ever $10-off coupon promotion in local papers.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes,” Hicks said. “We plan on being here for a long time.”
Nationally, the restaurant business is going through its slowest growth since 1991, when the country was at war with Iraq and suffered a recession. The last slump was particularly long and painful for the Southland’s restaurant scene. Now restaurateurs are once again frowning as economic concerns mount and the country prepares for war.
The recent events aren’t expected to hit fast-food chains as hard. But for national upscale chains, especially those catering to business travelers, the outlook is considerably dimmer. Shares of two of the nation’s top-of-the-line steakhouse chains--Morton’s Restaurant Group Inc. and Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group Inc.--hit 52-week lows Friday.
“We are in a white-collar recession, which was hurting the high-end restaurant, hotel and first-class airline businesses even before the terrorism,” said Alan Stillman, chief executive of Smith & Wollensky, which is based in New York and operates restaurants in New York, Washington and Las Vegas, among other places. “Now, it’s going to be worse, at least in the short-term.”
At trendy Moomba near Melrose, dinner business has fallen 60% since Sept. 11, said Frank Falcinelli, a partner and chef. The eatery, which has hosted parties for Hollywood luminaries such as Elton John, has all the trappings of coolness: servers dressed in lavender ties, crushed velvet seats and a distinctive menu that included Petrossian Osetra caviar for $110. The only thing missing are the people, which had filled the place until last week.
“We’re all looking at our reservation books and saying, ‘Where is everybody? Why isn’t anybody coming out?’ ” Falcinelli said.
Moomba, along with several other local restaurants, is sponsoring a Sunday benefit to raise money for the families of the fallen New York firefighters. The event, to be held in Moomba’s parking lot, will feature lots of food and good vibes. A minimum $25 donation is required.
“We’re here. We’re open,” Falcinelli said. “We want our customers to come back and use our restaurant as their living room. It is a safe place.”
