Live Long … and Prosper
Lots of Restaurants are good at what they do, but still fail. What does it take to both excel and endure? Go one-on-one with Houlihan's Bob Hartnett to find out.
by Dennis Boone
Industry analysts say the average life expectancy of a restaurant in the United States is something less than five years. If that figure holds for Kansas City, as well, you can believe the number is being skewed high by the true legacies of dining here.
For evidence of that, just go back to 1989, when the forerunner of Best of Business Kansas City, then known as the Silver Ladle Awards, recognized a Top 10 in restaurants, regardless of category. An astonishing seven of those are still in business today. And an eighth, the Peppercorn Duck Club, was still cooking until last fall, when the Sheraton flag began flying over what had been the Hyatt Regency Crown Center.
That 23-year span is long enough to have seen four cohorts of “average” restaurants come and go.
Two lessons can be drawn from this: One, quality counts. These people are good at what they do: They prepare terrific food, they provide terrific service, and they build the kind of client loyalty that lays waste to sector analytics like average life spans. The second lesson is harder to read because there’s an inherent contradiction involved when you talk about what allows restaurants to survive for prolonged periods.
But it’s the same lesson that applies to virtually any business. These operations have endured for 30, 40, even 50 years or more because they aren’t the same restaurants today that they were when they opened—or the same ones they were just a few years ago. Not entirely.
Let Bob Hartnett explain. He’s the president and CEO of Houlihan’s, which operates the Bristol Seafood Grill, this year’s Gold medalist in its category, and the No. 1 overall reader pick in 1989. No restaurant, he says, survives by standing still.
“You open the doors with vision of what you want your business to be,” he said. “But really, almost every day, you’ve got to figure out how to evolve that business. That’s across the board—the food, the recipes, the consumer test points, the service.”
In addition to the Bristol, the parent company operates six Houlihan’s and a J. Gilbert’s in this area. “With all three concepts, we have continued to evolve the business through innovation, creativity and execution. All three are very different today than 10 years ago, or even five years ago. We feel like we must continue to press forward in order to excel.”
Pressure to do so comes from a changing client base, he said. “Over the last 10 to 12 years, people have become very sophisticated about food and service,” Hartnett said. “The Food Channel, they’re watching that 24/7. Especially at the level of the Bristol, we have to be very sophisticated, innovative and interesting with our new selections, along with the old standbys.”
Hartnett also cited one other key to longevity: Consistency. Low turnover over-all—and particularly at Bristol, which hires just one or two people per quarter—are hugely important.
Hartnett himself has been at Houlihan’s for 11 years, after serving as CEO at Einstein Brothers. Already on staff when he arrived were three people who still lead Bristol Leawood’s operations today: General Manager Phil Tumberger, chef Dan Uche and Lou Ambrose, who leads the overall seafood division. Hartnett lauded not just their competencies—“99.9 percent of the credit for Bristol’s success goes to these three, along with Bristol downtown’s General Manage Brian Barnes and chef Travis Napier,” he said—but the infusion of stability they bring to the organization.
“We have a lot of employees who have been with us a long time, in the front of the house and the back of the house,” he said. “It makes a huge difference because they become so skilled in their jobs. They understand what service means and how to cook food and get it out and those kinds of things.”
So what should we expect in the coming years?
“There are a number of challenges,” he said. “Government-regulation costs are going to be a challenge, rising labor costs, health costs, the overall cost of doing business.
“For us internally, what has helped us to be successful in the past is what we have to continue to do in the future: Stay abreast of consumer trends, innovate,” Hartnett said. “This is a very competitive area, so we don’t want to miss a step and find somebody next door executing better or serving more innovative, interesting food.
“But,” he noted, “there’s always risk associated with any change.”
And that, friends, is food for thought—no matter what line of work you’re in. 
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