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When Cool Goes Cold

Category: Eat in Diners

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Written by Randy Garbin

Are you sitting down? Two recent developments in the world of the American roadside has shook the very foundations of everything we know and love.

George Soros, one of the world's wealthiest men, now partly owns the highly regarded Dinosaur Barbecue and Carol Sheehan has announced the sale of her first Red Arrow Diner franchise. That's right, people. One of the best barbecue joints and one of the best diners on the planet will soon go big time and big money.

I know Carol, of course. I think the world of her. If every diner out there operated their places more like hers, you'd all have a great diner in your town. We discovered her precious diner oasis in the heart of downtown Manchester, New Hampshire back in 1998. We reported then that we loved everything about the place except for the smoking. Carol took that to heart and banned the butt. The rest is history. In 2007, Carol announced to me that she might soon start to franchise her restaurant with the help of a Utah-based franchising company. Asking me what I thought of the development, I strained to constructively express my thoughts.

I don't care much for franchise operations. If you want to buy into one or go to them, fine, but to me a franchise works like any copy of anything -- no matter how much you try, you will end up with an inferior version of the original. Your best hope for success lies in the meticulous management of the concept, which because of how franchising works, requires stamping out any quirks that made the original so attractive. For a diner, this is especially dangerous. We go to diners (and other roadside-related businesses) because of the quirks and the personality. A chain restaurant's character and appeal comes not from those impromptu interactions between help and customer but from a carefully crafted marketing plan.

So, how do I feel about this development? I'm happy as hell for Carol. For her, this could mean a real payday for her, and knowing as I do how hard she and others in this business work, no one deserves it more than she does. However, the long-standing mission of Roadside has always held the mom-and-pop enterprise in the greatest esteem. A franchise marks the departure from the whole mom-and-pop milieu. Then again, Carol can hardly look forward to a life leisure. A successful diner chain or franchise has few precedents. As much as the market loves the diner concept these days, we can still count on one hand the number of successful examples of a diner chain: Silver Diner, Double TT Diner, and to some extent, the Denny's Diner idea. Ironically, the Red Arrow was once part of a small regional chain, so maybe lightning will strike twice and Carol will show us all the way.

In the case of Dinosaur, we now have a much-revered restaurant and roadside attraction graduating into the upper echelons of high-restaurant-finance. Started in the 1980s by a Harley motorcycle enthusiast as an excuse to serve good barbecue to his buddies, Dinosaur Barbecue seemed to single-handedly keep Syracuse on the map. We visited many times in the 1990s, and sung its praises to anyone who'd listen. During its prime, Dinosaur could hold its own against anything from south of the Mason-Dixon. Great food, sassy-but-honest service, and the perfect honky-tonk atmosphere befitting what one would expect in one of the country's best joints.

Popularity, of course, makes operators think expansion. Soon, Dinosaur had a store in Rochester at the old train station and then in the upper west side of Manhattan. We visited the Manhattan operation last year. Very good food. Fine setting. But as good as the original? Not quite. This is fine for visiting parents of the Columbia student body, but for real fanatics seeking something truly special, well, the thrill was gone.

Now we hear that Dinosaur and its Soros-funded corporate entity that replaced the biker-owner has approached the city of Troy, New York seeking various tax breaks to set up a fourth store on that city's riverfront. We've heard howls of protest from other roadside-related web logs about the potential deal, mentioning on one hand that Dinosaur ain't what it used to be, and asking why is the world's richest guy asking for tax breaks?

In response to the former: Well, duh. Sad, but true, nothing stays cool forever. At some point the owners wanted to stop working and cash in on their efforts. Their successors need to adhere to a basic formula already so close to perfection that they only have to pay lip-service to it and come out well-ahead of any competition. Quality will inevitably suffer, but guess what? In the wake of Dinosaur's spreading popularity, I've seen a veritable explosion of barbecue joints here in the Northeast.

In response to the latter: Your alternative is an empty building. You choose.