When the bottom line is top priority

• locusolus
• Done? Pay your bill and get out. We’ve got to turn this table.

“Mediocre food, it turns out, pays.”
That’s a line from Forbes magazine writer Caleb Melby’s upcoming Forbes profile on uber-successful corporate restaurant owner Tillman Fertitta (his empire includes the Joe’s Crab Shack, Rainforest Cafe and T-Rex Cafe chains, among others). The headline says it all: “The World’s Richest Restaurateur Has a Secret: It’s Not About the Food.”

Not about the food? That isn’t exactly a revelation to anyone who frequents chain restaurants. All restaurateurs want to make a profit, but corporate chains typically have to answer to shareholders. (Except Tillman Fertitta, that is, who owns 100 percent of Landry’s Inc., which purchased the McCormick & Schmick’s chain earlier this year in a hostile takeover.)

Kansas City was the birthplace, in the 1970s, of one of America’s most successful corporate casual-dining chains: Gilbert/Robinson, a company that did care about the quality of its food and service before it was bought and sold several times by increasingly larger corporate entities. And was later sliced and diced into smaller companies.