Hollywood's out, Carnvial's in: Restaurant gets new theme

But even with the local focus, the Mardi Gras Club may find, as many national theme restaurants have, that keeping a theme fresh enough to attract steady business can be a challenge.

In recent years, the "eat-ertainment" segment of the restaurant industry produced theme establishments built around such gimmicks as rainforests, race cars, country music, comic books and wrestling icons as hooks to draw crowds and peddle merchandise.

So many theme spots sprung up that their novelty wore off, says Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of Technomic Inc., a foodservice research firm in Chicago. "There's the sense of 'been there, done that, got the T-shirt,"' lie says.

The French Quarter has now seen both the Planet Hollywood and die supermodel-themed Fashion Cafe come and go. Memorabilia and mediocre menus aren't enough to draw people to these places anymore, Lombardi says.

Owners of the Hard Rock Cafe seem to agree, and the New Orleans Hard Rock Cafe on North Peters Street will be one of seven cafes in the 104-unit chain to test a re-imaging of the 30year-old concept. Restaurants in Dallas, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, London, Paris and New Orleans will undergo renovations valued between $400,000 and $2.2 million. Work in New Orleans will begin in March.

The restaurant will convert a portion of die cafe's dining area into a concert hall in hopes of finding a new late-night audience and luring locals to the club, says James Weir, general manager of the local store. Tourists now make up about 60% of the cafe's business, he says.

The New Orleans Hard Rock added live music last fall to the restaurant known primarily for its pricey hamburgers and primarily rock star memorabilia. Turnout to the occasional performances in the building's second floor dining room, the Old Levee Street Room, have been "decent," says Weir. "But we didn't expect it to be great immediately." The restaurant will soon outfit the room with upgraded sound equipment for nightly performances and will redesign the room to look more like a nightclub, he says.

In March, the restaurant will turn its walk-up merchandise window, selling T-shirts, caps and jackets bearing the restaurant's world-famous logo, into a full retail store. Merchandise sales at places Eke Hard Rock can account for as much as 50% of the restaurant's revenue, says Lombardi with Technomic.

Both changes make the restaurant more nearly kin to The House of Blues on Decatur Street, which markets itself as a live music hall, emphasizing merchandising and downplaying the restaurant portion of the business. They also mirror changes made to the Chicago Hard Rock Cafe where a $3 million niglitclub-themed renovation was iust completed.

Before pulling out in November, local investors in the Planet Hollywood franchise tried a different approach to resuscitate their ailing restaurant.

Planet Hollywood International Inc., the parent of the local restaurant, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 1999 and closed nine restaurants. New Orleans was to be the 10th. A few months later, Chef James "Beany" MacGregor and founding partners of Semolina International Pastas restaurant Greg Reggio, Hans Limburg and Gary Darling made a deal to operate the restaurant as an independent licensee of the chain.

When their gourmet menu changes didn't attract more visitors, the partners considered launching a new restaurant in the I 8,000-square-foot space, says Reggio, but decided it would cost too much. At the end of October 2000, Reggio and partners let their lease expire with the building's owners.

The perfect business for the space, which Reggio calls "First and Main for tourist traffic", is not a restaurant that tries to reproduce Hollywood movie magic but something that he says "screams New Orleans." Thus, Mardi Gras Club.

Shannon Wilkinson, who operates seven restaurants and nightclubs in Lafayette, including The Plaza, Ray's Sports Bar and The Lion's Tavern, is collaborating with Mardi Gras float budder Blain Kern Studios to decorate the space.

The restaurant's sales team is working with the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Louisiana Travel Promotion Agency and private meeting planners to book parties III the dub.

Visitors will see vestiges of the former tenant. Planet Hollywood, with early investment support from actors Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, featured clothing and props used in their movies to decorate the walls. Glass cases displaying, say, the leather jacket Schwarzenegger wore in "The Terminator" will now house Mardi Gras king costumes. Television monitors that once showed movies will run scenes from past Carnival celebrations. And the Mardi Gras Club will use Planet Hollywood's merchandise window to sell its own branded leisure wear.

Meanwhile, a "TaGeaux" bar on the ground floor will sell cocktails on the run to passersby.

Wilkinson's team is working to secure permission to offer live entertainment at the club. The budding's zoning does not permit live music as a conditional use. Until then, the club will offer deejay dance music seven nights a week with no closing hour.

Lombardi of Technomic says big theme restaurants such as these have a better chance of surviving in cities like New Orleans that have considerable convention activity and international tourists - target audiences for the chains. But that assumes the increasing competition among eating and entertainment attractions in New Orleans doesn't drive them out first, he says.