Desert Island Restaurants in April opened the fifth location of its Ling & Louie’s Asian Bar and Grill, a franchised unit in Boise, Idaho. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company has existing units in Phoenix and Chandler, Ariz., as well as two in Denver. Randy Schoch, founder and chief executive of Desert Island, which also owns five franchised Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses and two Romano’s Macaroni Grills in Hawaii, as well as Thaifoon — Taste of Asia in Salt Lake City, discussed his plans with Nation’s Restaurant News.
Hometown: La Canada, Calif.
Education: La Canada High School and Chaminade University of Honolulu
Career highlights: buying first restaurant at 25, becoming first franchisee of Roy’s, being inducted into the Ruth’s Chris Steak House Hall of Fame, winning Ruth’s “Franchisee of the Year” in 2010
Personal: wife, Cheri; two
children, Randy Jr., 19; Victoria, 17
Hobbies: surfing, water skiing,
hiking, traveling
You’re heading to Alaska for your next Ling & Louie’s?
We’ll be in Anchorage. I believe we’ve slated June 27 as the opening.
What are your expansion plans?
We’re not trying to expand too quickly. We’re trying to find good partners to grow [with] in interesting markets. We’ve got five open now, the sixth will be Anchorage, and then hopefully we can do some business in California. We’ve also been talking with potential partners about airport locations.
Would you say Ling & Louie’s morphed out of Thaifoon and Roy’s?
We decided that instead of going with the plates separate in the old Chinese fashion — honey-walnut chicken here with rice on the side and everybody shares — we decided to do center-of-the-plate presentation for the protein surrounded by the carbohydrate, whether it be white rice, brown rice, or [a] fried rice or noodle dish. We also decided to go with an American staple, whether it was a taco, meatloaf, slider or flatbread. We said if the American public liked it, how do we grab that and give it an Asian twist, like a Mongolian flatbread or an ahi taco or Asian meatloaf sliders.
Is this a good time to be franchising?
I think if the economics work, it’s always a good time to be a franchisor. It has obviously been tough for some franchisees to get capital in the past 24 months; that’s a struggle everywhere. But we’re aligning with strong franchisees that have capital available to them.
How is the economy for full-service casual dining?
Casual dining is competitive. I’m a fine-dining guy, and it’s taken me about 10 years to understand casual dining. There are a lot of things similar and a lot of things not. This is a lot more fun.
What makes it more fun?
We’re a little irreverent. We have fun sayings in the restaurant, and it has a fun story behind it. The waiters will get down on one knee and say “My mother had this last night.” … We want it to be a little bit fun and goofy and different. But when it comes to the food and what gets onto the plate, we take that very seriously.
Coming out of the recession, where are you competitively?
We are nicely positioned. I’m in the fine-dining business, and that’s recuperating very well. Our business is up about 10 or 12 percent over last year. And our Macaroni Grills [Desert Island has owned the franchised rights to Hawaii for about five years] are doing OK and coming out well. And our business here [at Ling & Louie’s] is up 13 or 14 percent.
What’s it like going from franchisee to franchisor?
I think that’s our biggest asset. We’ve been franchisees in three big companies: Roy’s and the Outback relationship and currently with Ruth’s and Macaroni Grill. I think we’ll be a good franchisor because we are a franchisee. We can anticipate a lot of the franchisees’ needs.
Contact Ron Ruggless at ronald.ruggless@penton.com.
