Chefs Playing in Snow near Polish restaurant Courtesy of Wall Street Journal

The worst, most depressing time to own a restaurant is right after the holidays when many among us can best be described as “stuffed.” We’ve eaten too much, drunk too liberally. The idea of going out to a restaurant is not hugely appealing.

So it’s ‘thinking’ time…

A restaurateur we know offered the equivalent of a white sale: everything white on the menu went on sale. This included New England clam chowder, potato soup, gnocchi, white fishes with white sauces, rice pudding, vanilla ice cream, etc. You get the idea.

Riskier was the promotion for a snowy day: the deal was for guests to make a reservation for a certain date. If it snowed on that day, everyone could eat free.  The joint was filled to capacity and No, it didn’t snow. (A quick check with the weather man revealed it (almost) never snowed on that specific day.)

Ho! Ho! Yo!!!

The Rainbow Room at Night

The dazzling, venerable Rainbow Room has been in the news again, sadly…Former colleagues have wept to learn of its current demise.

Today, I remembered when I was working at The Rainbow Room, there were hardly any reservations for the big New Year’s Eve gala dinner one year. We were all terribly worried.

A full-page ad was designed for placement in The New York Times. It listed all the fabulous goodies the guests would be receiving–free champagne, gorgeous food, top flight entertainers, big bands, dancing, fantastic view of the fireworks on the East River and a lot of other impressive stuff that I’ve now forgotten.

CEO Joe Baum reached for the designers’ proposed advertisement.

Across the entire page he wrote:

SOLD OUT!!!

“Run it,” he demanded.

We gasped.

“Wait,” he instructed. He left the room, leaving us to think that he had gone quite mad.

The moment the ad appeared in the paper, the phones rang non-stop.

Callers told the most incredible lies: “I am the chef’s mother,”  “I made my reservation six weeks ago,” “I’ve been coming to New Year’s Eve every year for 35 years…”

The reservations desk responded: “I’m so sorry…we’re sold out…but we can put you on a waiting list. It’s an additional $25 per person cost.”  (I might have made up that last bit.)

No problem!

The room filled immediately.

The lesson I learned was that Joe Baum knew to whom he was speaking.

In Manhattan, if a place is sold out, you’ve positively got to go there.

Marcus Samuelsson, age 41, owns 6 restaurants, wrote 2 cookbooks and a memoir, appears (very) frequently on the TV, featured with full pages in the New York Times on Sunday…featured in Food Arts…employs 700 people…unintentionally leaves most of us in the dust?

When we think of Ben & Jerry we think of caring philanthropists who produce super ice cream. We think of Starbucks as earth-friendly folk who generously provide health benefits for their employees and make high priced coffee that is sold in a paper cup.

These images are creations of marketing experts who have specialized knowledge within specific fields.

A culinary brand manager understands the demographic profile of food television viewers, analyzes food trends, researches packaging innovations and coordinates the strategies of advertisers especially when it comes to “personalities” of the Anthony Bourdain genre.

Anthony Bourdain said, “ “Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who’d just as soon cut each other’s throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion.” (His current net worth is estimated to be $6 million.)

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