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From a corner table inside his trendy concept SoLou, Peter Sclafani describes the Perkins Road restaurant’s ascent as a hip-but-accessible spot whose décor, menu and cocktails appeal to female diners.
Opened in 2021, SoLou showed so much growth potential out of the gate that Sclafani and business partner Kiva Guidroz quickly planned for a second location in Lafayette. It opened in June and is part of an aggressive strategy by the partners’ Making Raving Fans Hospitality group to repeat SoLou units across the Gulf South.
“It’s a strategy we call 10-10-10,” Sclafani says. “Ten restaurants in 10 years along I-10. I freak out a lot of my team when I say that.”
Even in an era defined by a global pandemic, supply chain challenges and rising product, labor and insurance costs, Making Raving Fans has growth in its crosshairs. The 400-employee business currently has five units across three concepts that include SoLou, Portabello’s and P-Beau’s. Sclafani also has an ownership stake in Phil’s Oyster Bar, which he helped rebrand and modernize.
Sclafani’s transition from many years as a former chef, and later co-owner, of the upscale Italian eatery Ruffino’s to restaurant group founder signals one of the biggest transitions happening across the Greater Baton Rouge hospitality industry—the staying power and influence of a growing number of regional restaurant groups.
More groups are operating today than in the past, operators say, and they’re changing the way local restaurants turn a profit, vie for customer loyalty and deploy both public-facing and back-of-the-house technology. To a large extent, groups also influence the way we eat across the Capital Region because they are best positioned to seize new opportunities.
When a new local restaurant opens these days, there’s a good chance it’s part of a group.
Openings so far in 2024 bear this out. Big River Pizza Company, launched in downtown St. Francisville in April, is owned by Blue House Hospitality Company, operator of The Myrtles and its two dining concepts, Restaurant 1796 and Elta Coffee. The Patio restaurant, opened in Baton Rouge in June, is a project of Magnolia Restaurant Group, which operates Geisha, Sushi with a Flair in Denham Springs and Umami Japanese Bistro in Baton Rouge.
The forthcoming Tulum’s Grill & Cantina, scheduled to open soon near Bass Pro Shops in Denham Springs, is the brainchild of Ruderis and Maria Gomez, whose family restaurant group owns Sarita’s Grill and Cantina in Maurepas, El Magey Mexican Buffet and Panaderia Las Delicias in Baton Rouge, and Bonta del Forno Ristorante in Denham Springs.
These and others, including well-known City Group Hospitality, Byronz Restaurant Family, Go Eat Concepts, and Hufft Marchand Hospitality, are behind some of the city’s most popular concepts.
Restaurant groups succeed through systems, operators say.
“In 2019, I was cutting up a 50-pound bag of onions at Junior’s, and it hit me that we had three concepts over two cities,” says Hufft Marchand Hospitality co-founder Nick Hufft.
The group operates Curbside Burgers and The Overpass Merchant in Baton Rouge; Junior’s on Harrison in New Orleans; Gail’s Fine Ice Cream in both cities; and a new concept, Barcar, which opened in August in Metairie. “I thrive on chaos, but I knew I needed to go out and hire someone a lot smarter than me, Hufft says.”
The company hired well-known restaurant consultant Tony Cruz as its vice president of operations, and, later, a food and beverage director to drive menu profitability. It has also beefed up its internal systems, including using a consistent POS system across concepts.
And it has opened a ghost kitchen and commissary that streamlines prep and has enabled the company to develop its Il Supremo pasta line, which sells artisan dried pasta products to more than 30 restaurants across the Gulf South. The company also developed a small specialty pizza line.
The commissary model also works for Baton Rouge-based Go Eat Concepts, the operator of fast-casual brands Izzo’s Illegal Burrito and Lit Pizza, as well as full-service concepts Rocca Pizzeria and Modesto. Called Central Kitchen, its 23,000-square-foot commissary in north Baton Rouge serves as both a distribution center and product test kitchen.
“We’re 95 percent self-distributed with our food to our restaurants,” says Go Eat Concepts owner Ozzie Fernandez. “We’re able to buy in large quantities and ship to the restaurants daily.”
The restaurants, including more than 30 Izzo’s units and 14 locations of Lit Pizza, receive 100% of their produce from Central Kitchen, which buys directly from suppliers in Mexico and Florida.
“This has allowed us to really pass on those savings, whether it’s benefits, wage increases or holding our menu prices even with inflation,” Fernandez says.
Greater Baton Rouge consumers have begun to understand the joint ownership of many of their favorite concepts.
Founded seven years ago, City Group Hospitality operates two locations of City Pork, City Slice, Proverbial Wine Bistro, Spoke & Hub, Beausoleil Coastal Cuisine, Rouj Creole and catering and food services divisions.
Operating Partner Stephen Hightower says that while the group’s individual concepts enjoy strong brand recognition in Baton Rouge, so does the restaurant group itself.
“I think people now understand that City Group Hospitality is not the financial institution, Citigroup, like they used to,” he says.
Profitability has come through the constant analysis of data captured through uniform POS platforms, Hightower says.
“We’re constantly evaluating what the numbers say,” he says.
For many groups, growth has come from the ability to quickly seize real estate opportunities. For example, when a storefront opened in Long Farm Village, City Group developed the full-service bistro Proverbial, featuring wine, wood-fired flatbread and shareable boards. The bistro opened in 2021.
“We saw an opportunity to open a nice, neighborhood restaurant on that side town of town,” Hightower says. “It had a pizza oven, so we knew we were going to incorporate that.”
Similarly, Sclafani says the sudden availability of the Rum House on Perkins Road is what drove him to develop SoLou.
“We loved the location and the space with the patio outside,” he says. “We knew we needed to do something there.”
Sclafani says market data pulled from surrounding neighborhoods and businesses helped determine what demographic to target: professional women.
Restaurant group owners report no shortage of opportunities.
“You name it, we hear it,” Hufft says. “Someone will bring us a new opportunity. Or it’s someone wanting to retire, and they have no one to take over the business. Or someone who’s having a hard time making it.”
What works depends on numbers and whether a new concept fits within the company’s culture as well as its operations, he notes.
“We’re in the game to turn a profit, to continue to grow,” Hufft says. “It’s extremely important to us to always be dissecting how to get better.”
