The "I" in choice

Historians, as you probably know, are prone to fight at the drop of a three-cornered hat. Just mention the Strong Man Theory, for instance, and you’re likely to see a headlock here, an eye jab there. Before long, medieval curses will be flying, and enough tweed will be ripped to make James Lipton wince. Still, even after all the bloodshed, one faction will insist that history is driven by extraordinary individuals acting on personal agendas. And their opponents will refuse to budge from the conviction that circumstances, not strong men or women, are what change the path of human development.

So, please, if you’re holding a kegger this weekend for that rowdy bunch from Elizabethan Studies, do not mention the latest initiatives from Starbucks or Danny Meyer.

After all, USA Today’s exclusive on Starbucks’ latest menu overhaul left little doubt the chain is adopting more healthful choices because of developments in the life of CEO Howard Schultz. The article recounted how Schultz discovered during a physical that his cholesterol was too high and that he needed to pursue a more healthful lifestyle. He changed his ways, the story noted. And, at virtually the same time, so did Starbucks. First it rolled out its new healthful smoothie line. Then, Schultz disclosed to USA Today’s Bruce Horovitz, it drafted the new reduced-fat, higher-fiber breakfast array that’ll be introduced on Tuesday.

A coincidence? Ask anyone historian with a well-thumbed copy of “Julius Caesar: The Early Years” on his or desk.

Then there’s the new diversification by Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. The operator of such fine-dining shrines as Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café is planning to open restaurants in the Mets’ new stadium, Citi Field, when it opens in Flushing, Queens, next year. Nation’s Restaurant News broke the story after speaking with Meyer, who acknowledged that this is more than a cold, calculated business decision. “We think Citi Field is a great opportunity in which to parlay our love of sports and launch a new division,” he told NRN’s Elissa Elan.

Clearly, neither businessman is stepping outside himself to look with complete detachment at possible new directions for their businesses. Yet both have repeatedly demonstrated they’re no Dan Quayle when it comes to spelling out opportunity. These are some of the most respected figures in the business, if not American commerce. Does that mean those of us yet to climb Mr. Olympus should consider a little more Yoda and a little less Peter Drucker? Should we indeed yield a little more to The Force we feel?

The record is at best murky. In the late 1980s, a businessman named Victor Kiam decided he really appreciated a certain type of electric shaver. “I like it so much I bought the company,” he famously told consumers in a long-running TV campaign for Remington razors. That bit of strongman business savvy worked well for Kiam; he would grow the company and remain its chairman until his death in 2001.

But personal preference also led him to buy the New England Patriots football team. It was a financial disaster for him.

Less ambiguous are the bankruptcy notices for restaurant and after restaurant that were opened because the entrepreneur liked the idea of being in that business, or really enjoyed cooking, or loved hanging out in star-studded establishments. Ego equaled disaster in those instances.

Of course, those decisions were often based solely on bias, not on business sense. Schultz and Meyer probably couldn’t have suspended their commercial intuition if they had wanted to do so.

So my bet is they’ve made good decisions, even if each choice may have been more influenced by personal criteria than other moves they’ve made.

We’ll certainly see. Perhaps starting on Tuesday.

Suddenly, everyone wants to be in onsite

If Danny Meyer utters, “Nice day,” weathermen probably adjust their forecasts accordingly. He’s regarded with such respect and admiration that world leaders likely buzz him from time to time at Gramercy Tavern or Union Square Cafe, eager to check their world view against his. And what’s he likely to say if the Pope makes small talk about where the restaurant sage is planning to open restaurants during times like these? The Pontiff must grab his hat when he hears “onsite,” a segment once typified by cafeterias and scaled-down outposts of the big fast-food chains.

Yet that’s the bold expansion initiative that Meyer detailed late last week to the onsite specialist of Nation’s Restaurant News, Elissa Elan. Meyer has created a new division within his Union Square Hospitality Group, an operator largely of fine-dining restaurants, expressly to develop the group’s concepts in pro-sports facilities from coast to coast.

Meyer is hardly alone among celebrity restaurateurs and fine-dining specialists in diversifying during these challenging times into so-called captive markets. A few years ago, Wolfgang Puck and Todd English snagged a sea of ink by lending their menus and reputations to airport locations. Once a footpath, that alternate route is quickly being trampled into a major thoroughfare as operators seize the opportunities of opening in department stores, sports and concert arenas, bus and train stations, casinos, hotels, ski resorts, even spas. It may be just a matter of time until a hospital patient can call down and have a meal brought up from the Gordon Ramsay outpost on the main floor.

Meanwhile, a whole new wave of chains, full and limited service, are right there with the folks in chef’s whites, vying for their piece of the onsite scene as well. As Elan also reported last week, you can now add IHOP to a list that already includes nearly all of the big casual-dining brands.

The deals are as diverse as the concepts involved. But you can readily assume some common advantages. For one thing, there’s the attraction during a time of softening streetside traffic of having a built-in market of sorts. The business can come in peaks and valleys, depending on events and the season of the year. But those peaks can be pretty high.

Operators also cite the sweetheart deals that some places will extend to put a big-name brand on the premises. And even without significant build-out assistance or a dream rent, the situation carries certain incremental advantages that can add up to a big plus. Several years ago I had dinner with a casual-chain operator who’d just landed his first casino location. The volumes he expected were astronomical, based on the host facility’s traffic. But, he noted with glee, his costs would be cut by piggybacking on the place’s purchasing, maintenance, inventory-control and credit card processing functions. It amounted in his case to a point or two of margin.

Of course, the risk is also sky-high. Screw up in a streetside location and you damage your reputation in the local market. Botch things in a site where half the world can be turned off and you have quite a comeback to engineer, on virtually a nationwide scale.

Which brings us back to Danny Meyer. He’s revered as the Jimmy Stewart of the restaurant industry in part because he foregoes gimmicks and bandwagon jumping. As he told Elan, USHG’s new Hudson Yards Sports & Entertainment division will try to learn next year from its initial at-bat, at the New York Mets’ new homefield, before swinging for the fences. It also plans to work with an experienced concessionaire, starting with Aramark at the Mets’ new Citi Field.

But his decision to move into onsite will likely be taken as a sanction. Meyer has yet to close a restaurant, or even backtrack from one of his initiatives.

Indeed, one of his most successful endeavors, the Shake Shack retro-styled burger concept, was actually a good deed that turned great, like cutting the elderly neighbor’s lawn and discovering oil in the process. It started as a cart in Madison Park, across from his Tabla and Eleven Madison fine-dining restaurants. Meyer’s staff sold hotdogs in the park as a public service, a payback to the community. The dogs became so popular that the city gave Meyer a nifty 1960s-style building in the park, where the lines were soon dozens of people deep.

Now Shake Shack generates volumes that rival some of Meyer’s white-tablecloth places, according to members of his organization. No wonder it will be one of the anchor concepts of Hudson Yards, with each new stadium or arena likely to sport one, according to Meyer.