For Phil Romano, the joy of business is in the creation.
On his twelfth start-up, Philip J. Romano struck it rich.
Not that the other 11 weren't successful; they were, though some more than others. But how many times can you take a friend's $15,000 in seed capital and transform it into a stake worth $3.5 million? And how many times do you yourself wind up with a net worth in eight figures? At age 45, Romano found himself president and chief executive officer of Fuddruckers Inc., a $25-million company with 51 restaurants in 19 states and Canada, soon to appear on the INC. 100 (it's #25 this year, down from #15 last year).
Every entrepreneur's dream, right? Not Phil Romano's. In 1984, less than two years after taking Fuddruckers public, Romano bailed out of his $250,000-a-year CEO's job to start a new restaurant, and when that one is up and running he has two more restaurant concepts he'd like to try. "At Fuddruckers," he says, "all I was doing was talking to lawyers and accountants. At least with Stix" -- that's the new place -- "I'll be back in the restaurant business."
More accurately, the start-up business. Romano does for a living what most entrepreneurs say is the hardest part of enterpreneuring -- getting the bloody business off the ground. Once it's up, well, that's not so interesting to him, except maybe figuring out how and when to get out. In his career, Romano has launched, then sold or closed, 11 restaurants plus the Fuddruckers chain, and is working on the new one, which he calls Stix Eating Spa. Yet he has never, so far, held on for more than a few years. So how long can you resist asking a man like that, someone who should have start-up-and-move-on down to a science by now, how he does it?
"How does an artist do it?c he asks back. "First he gets an idea. Then he gets some canvas and some paint . . ."
But the science?
"You mean you want to know my -- what would you call it, my methodology? OK, I get an idea. I think about it. I ask other people what they think about it. If they get excited, I get more excited. I put it down on paper. Then I find an architect, get some renderings, and show them to people. If they get excited, I go on. I put the numbers together, write a prospectus, and see if it's feasible. The next step is to look for a location, tet some building plans, and eventually I've got a restaurant."
Yes, but how do you get the ideas? And how do you factor in demographics? Who does your market studies and your site selection? Let's have Romano's Rules for Restaurant Research, or whatever you call them. Surely there's system.
A system? A blank look.
There's no system. At least Romano himself can't describe one, and people who have worked with him are equally at a loss. "How he gets from step one to step nine," says Bill Baumhauer, the new CEO of San Antonio-based Fuddruckers, "no one knows." Maybe the only way to understand what Phil Romano does is to watch him do it.
If so, San Antonio during New Year's week was a good place to begin. Romano was about to open Stix. And since it was his first venture since Fuddruckers, a lot of people around him were watching as well, wondering if Romano still had the golden touch.
Baumhauer and Romano visited Japan two years ago to sign contracts with the company that would develop Fuddruckers there. They walked into a restaurant and saw food, skewered on small wooden sticks, being grilled at table side. "I saw them cooking that food on sticks," Romano remembers, "and in 10 minutes I 'saw' Stix. I went to the hotel room, drew it out, and here it is today."
Having an idea and knowing how to execute it are, of course, two different things. They're both important, but the flash of insight and originality of concept have always been Romano's hallmark. It shows up plainly at Fuddruckers.
Fuddruckers serves hamburgers in its chain of 100-plus franchised and company-owned locations, but there's no mistaking either its burgers or its restaurants for a fast-food place like McDonald's. The name is funky, slightly naughty, and entirely made up. There's a studied informality to the place that can't be attained with the molded plastic and formica most chains favor.Stacked cases of beer and beans, sacks of sugar and flour, and piles of other inventory define the aisles. Shelves of fresh produce identify the condiment bar. White-coated employees mix and bake rolls in plain view; butchers, likewise attired and displayed, trim and grind hanging beef. Grill cooks work where they can be seen. The seating area, with its tablecloths and yellow-awning ceiling, suggests a backyard patio.
The concept, as Romano explains it, is customer involvement -- the idea that you can see where your food is coming from, watch what's done to it, and doctor it up yourself. It's not dining, but it's not fast food, either. A half-pound burger at Fuddruckers costs $3.55, and you can feel like an adult eating there. Romano didn't invent hamburgers, but he invented a new context for them.
So it is with Stix: the novelty is not so much in the food as in the context.He calls Stix an eating spa -- a place you go to eat healthy. No megacorporate research department, whatever its budget, could ever have dreamed it up, maybe because there is no way a corporation could emulate Romano's method of generating original ideas. He deliberately pays scant attention. to what others in his industry are doing. Instead of business books, he reads contemporary novels. He goes to movies. He listens to people. What do they talk about? Worry about?How do they spend their time? He has a sensitive ear, and that is his principal market research tool. He stores what he hears, plays with it, and rearranges it in his mind. Eventually, something -- and who can know what it will be -- triggers the vision, the idea, what he "saw" in Japan. "I think," says an associate, "that Phil really sees things in his head. I'm sure he dreams in four-color."
