AUDIO: Restaurant openings are back on the menu in the US market.
Randall Hiatt, president of Fessel International, and a former Walt Disney Company employee for 12 years, said: “A lot of development is back on track in the US. During the recession people didn’t develop restaurants. We actually had negative expansion of restaurants meaning we had more restaurants close than open. But, now everybody is back, so it’s really a resurgence in restaurants.”
Among those expanding are Lazy Dog Café; Paul Fleming, who founded PF Chang, has a new chain called Paul Martin; and Darden restaurants, which just sold seafood chain Red Lobster. “[Darden] is doing very well. It is doing over $10m unit sales. There are just a lot of companies, local and regional that are expanding as people fill out their portfolios,” said Hiatt.
He added that there are a lot of strong regional chains, as well as national. On top of that, the world of the celebrity chef is also driving expansion in the restaurant sector.
noella.pio.kivlehan@estatesgazette.com
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