Kevin Rathbun has come a long way since his days as a dishwasher at a Sambo’s restaurant in Kansas City. Some 30 years later, he is the chef and co-owner of Rathbun’s, Krog Bar and Kevin Rathbun Steak, three of Atlanta’s most popular restaurants. Rathbun talked about Atlanta’s restaurant business, how the economy has affected it and what he anticipates will happen over the next year.
Hometown: Atlanta
Education: associate degree, Johnson County Community College, Johnson County, Kan.
Career highlights: becoming an entrepreneur and opening Rathbun’s, Krog Bar and Kevin Rathbun Steak; being named a James Beard rising star chef nominee; winning the Iron Chef competition
Personal: married for 20 years to his wife, Melissa, and raising their nephew, Mark
How is Atlanta’s restaurant industry doing these days?
The economy is starting to come back. I’m starting to see an upward trend. 2009 was a rough year, but we’re beginning to move in the right direction. [Personally,] we’ve held on strong. We are in a viable area that was built over 100 years ago, but kind of faded away for a while and now is on an uptick.
What kinds of concepts would you say are gaining in popularity here?
Burger joints are popping up all over the place, and we’re also starting to see more artisanal pizza places.
How were you affected by the downturn?
We didn’t have to lay anybody off. We cut back on hours a bit and cut back on our closing time. We used to stay open a bit later, but we condensed those hours to [save] labor dollars, and we watched our food [costs]. We talked to our vendors and said, ‘Listen, everyone needs to suffer a little bit with this.’ Our vendors give us really good pricing, and that helped us through it, too. The beauty of it is — being in this area for over six years — my rent was a little cheaper, my overhead a little less expensive. Some of my occupancy costs were down from, say, a place like Buckhead or downtown where prices were a little extraordinary.
Are you concerned about beef prices?
I’m always concerned about all prices. Butter prices just today [Sept. 20] went up. I don’t even know why. I was just on the phone with one of my vendors for some local butter, and it just went skyrocketing. You know, we’re trying to figure all that out and get in tune with it. We have a meat vendor we work with, and they’ve been on our menu since the beginning of Kevin Rathbun Steak. We want to keep them around; we like them and we like their quality, but their prices go up and we’ve got to keep that market trim. We don’t raise our prices when [their prices] go up.
Are you optimistic about the rest of 2010?
I am optimistic because we see some of the volume going up. We see a trend of cover counts coming in. Just today they announced the recession was over in June 2009. I think people — when all that happened at the very beginning, there was a lot of money out there — had cash, but they were sitting on it. We lost some of our private party business because people didn’t want to go high on the hog even though they had it. They’re starting to let that loose a little bit. We’re seeing some private parties coming back. And conventions are starting to play a big part. A lot of them canceled in 2009, but they’re coming back, and it’s looking even better for 2011. I think 2011 will be stronger for convention business, and I think we’ll be stronger because of the sheer volume of people in the city that come from different sporting events.
Are you finding it easier to obtain financing? Are you thinking about opening another restaurant?
I look all the time. I’m thinking more about a purchase as opposed to leasing. I leased my first two restaurants when I opened them six and a half years ago because I didn’t have any money to buy. But now things seem to be working; we bought the steakhouse three and a half years ago. I think there are real estate plays out there and opportunities that could work.
Contact Elissa Elan at eelan@nrn.com.
