Tom Richman

Love 'em And Leave 'em

 

So, anyway, ran the theory. In practice, the transition was not painless -- for either party. "With Fuddruckers," Baumhauer says, "Phil had painted a Mona Lisa, and he didn't want anyone messing with the smile. . . He had to get away. We were making changes, and he had a lot of problems with it. We expanded the menu. We added chicken, a small burger, the taco salad, and a kid's platter. We changed the decor. And when we make changes, that changes the picture he drew.

"We changed because customers tell us that it's too noisy, or it's too cold looking. God knows, Phil's concept was good, but he doesn't have the benefit of our research. We're more fast-food oriented than his concept, because customers say they don't want to stand in lines. Phil has a tough time trading off ambience for efficiency. Phil says people will tolerate lines and come to Fuddruckers once a month. I'm trying to make profits. Would they come twice a month if they didn't have to stand in line?

"The genius of Phil as an artist is that he creates a symmetry in his mind, but the chain mentality is all efficiencies. I could screw this up. Every time I make a change, I lose something from that picture he painted. But a successful concept and a profitable concept are two different things. At Stix, for example, he's going to have to cut costs, and he's going to have to compromise. How much compromise can he afford without destroying the concept? That's the question, but you can't put logic to a man like Phil. "He's not a logical person."

"The hardest thing for me," Romano says," was to keep them from changing the concept. Fuddruckers is a machine now; it works. It's been executed properly . . . so don't change the concept and confuse the people. Fuddruckers is a hamburger place. . . That was my proposition to the people. Baumhauer's systems are great, but he and his managers won't have any numbers to play with if they don't have a concept. What are the people going to want? Systems people would build something that is like everybody else's.

"Leaving was the best thing I could have done for Fuddruckers. I felt embarrassed taking a quarter of a million dollars in salary and not doing anything."

Late one evening after dinner -- fajitas eaten in a Market Square Mexican restaurant -- Romano said that what bothers him about the restaurant business is having to charge people. "I see them with their kids paying $3.55 for hamburgers, and it makes me sick. When I had dining places, it didn't make sense to charge people $30 for a plate of food."

Did he really expect anyone to believe that, but for convention, he would prefer to give his food away? It seemed inconsistent with his otherwise utter frankness. He tried to explain, standing there in the parking lot, but his explanation didn't help. Later Baumhauer tried. "I think," he said, "that Phil really means that. If he could give you the food and still be successful, he'd give you the food. There's an ego being served there. He wants people to say, 'Hey, Phil Romano did that.' It's adulation that he's looking for."

Maybe that's why Romano paints -- large acrylics, notable for their subtle color shading and their texture -- and displays his canvases on Fuddruckers office walls. And maybe that's why each new restaurant concept has to be better, more original than the last. He wants people to come, not because it's the cheapest (or the most expensive), but mostly because they like it. Romano wants approval, approbation, of which profit, like praise, is just a measure.

An hour or so before Stix's first opening for lunch on Saturday, Romano told a story about the paper route he had as a kid. He was supposed to put the paper on the customer's yard or porch, and for that his profit was 8? or 9? a week. He thought about what he could do to improve his profits, and came up with a plan. He talked to each subscriber and asked how much it would be worth to have the paper put between the front door and the storm door. A few people said it wasn't worth anything. Their papers got delivered just as before. Some people said a dime, and their papers got put between the doors. Some people said 50?; their papers went between the doors. A couple said a dollar, and their papers were put between the doors, too. The result was that he made much more money by pleasing the customer and letting each subscriber pay what he or she thought the service was worth than he would have made by putting money -- price -- first in proposition.

Stix's first paying customers had already walked through the front door at a few minutes past 11 o'clock when Romano and Waters finished chalking prices up on the menu blackboard that hangs at the head of the display counter. People concerned primarily with money would have had that detail worked out much, much earlier, but it was the last detail Romano got to in executing his new concept.

"I thought a lot," Romano says, "before going ahead with Stix. My as is on the line. A lot of people are going to be watching me. . . It scares me. How often does it happen that someone can take $15,000 and turn it into $3.5 million? Once in a lifetime? Is it possible to do that again?

"Then I thought, why not? Percentages are things that people make up. Failure now won't hurt my lifestyle, just my pride. If it doesn't work, I'll do something else. I just want to see if I can do it again. That's what's motivating me now."

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