HOMETOWN: Winnetka, Ill.
EDUCATION: attended Villanova University
PERSONAL: married, five children — two sets of twin boys
HOBBIES: "chasing around my kids, playing golf and enjoying great food"
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: "being the CEO of a company that has become my second family over the last 16 years"
Chris Artinian, chief executive of Morton’s the Steakhouse, welcomed Nation’s Restaurant News to the chain’s Chicago headquarters in early August to discuss growth in the United States and Asia, but the conversation began with talk of the economy; the stock market had begun selling off all the gains of 2011 following Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the nation’s credit rating.
Artinian said the chain’s business-traveler clientele probably would be more resilient this time around, compared with the start of the recession when Morton’s traffic and sales fell precipitously. In response, Morton’s focused on courting new guests with its rebranded Bar 12-21 and securing prime real estate. Continually bolstering Morton’s reputation also would pave the way for growth domestically and abroad, particularly in China, he said.
Morton’s core customer is the business traveler, so does the uncertainty in the stock market worry you? In the last bear market, companies cut back on entertaining.
Certainly, anybody in business on the luxury end is going to worry about where the economy’s going. But I think today it’s a little bit different. We went through ’08 and ’09 and learned a lot from that experience. In 2010 the mantra from the business community was, “We have to get back out there.” I don’t think this economy is going to change the fact that if we’re ever going to get out of this recession, we have to be in front of our clients doing deals.
I think it will be a little erratic, but as long as people need to get out there, it will continue to bode well for our business.
What went into 2011’s real estate strategy of relocating restaurants rather than opening new locations?
We’re in some markets we don’t want to leave. There’s no better steakhouse market than Dallas, and it’s a hub for travel. We were in the basement there for 20 years, literally out-positioned by a Subway restaurant. So we relocated to uptown Dallas across the road. The story was windows, maximum signage, a great street presence and the total new package. The restaurant, out of the gate, is doing two to three times the sales of the old location.
We are working through a list of somewhere between six and 10 candidates for a relocation. We’re talking about a $1 million to $1.2 million difference to the bottom line.
China is known to like American quick-service brands, but is the market there for a luxury brand like Morton’s? Do you have to be a pioneer?
Well, I think we are the pioneer. We’ve been in Singapore for 13 years and in Hong Kong for 12 years. We opened in Macau five years ago, and we opened our first restaurant in mainland China, in Shanghai, back in October. It’s not unreasonable to project eight restaurants there in three or four years.
One could say there could be 40 [total Morton’s] restaurants out there, and I’m not sure about that. But there could be 10 to 12 restaurants there, easy. The beauty of China and Asia is that strong brands do very well there. Another location in Shanghai and one in Beijing are low-hanging fruit and could be there in the next 18 months.
Contact Mark Brandau at mark.brandau@penton.com.
