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Bret Thorn
Restaurants can be important fixtures in their neighborhoods, but some operators take a different tack, opening temporary eateries to suit the needs of festivals, holidays or even just hungry dinnertime customers.
Spiegelworld, a traveling show involving two tents and a variety of performances, opens at New York’s South Street Seaport and stays for the summer. Accompanying it is The Squid and Martini restaurant, operated by the local six-unit Heartland Brewery chain.
Taryn DeVito, Heartland’s project manager for The Squid and Martini, says company owner Jon Bloostein was approached by Spiegelworld after learning that he was on the neighborhood’s community board, which had to grant a permit for the traveling show.
Heartland has a unit at the Seaport, which meant it already had a liquor license on site.
“We built a 40-foot bar and dropped some tents,” DeVito recalls, noting that the bar and the tables under the tents along the East River chiefly were staffed by crew from Heartland’s six restaurants, although the company did hire a few seasonal workers.
Not only was the project profitable, DeVito says, but she also has regular customers at the restaurant’s Union Square location that she first met at Spiegelworld.
“A lot of our regulars came down to Spiegelworld, too,” she observes.
In Dallas, Pizza Patrón, a chain that caters to the Hispanic community, has pop-up “tienditas,” or tents that it erects at apartment complexes and parks in part to sell more pizza and promote the brand.
The 5-foot-by-5-foot tents are pitched at apartment complexes during dinnertime or at parks during soccer games or festivals, and premade pizzas are sold for $5–a $1 discount from the regular price.
“We try to keep the transaction as simple as possible, without carrying a lot of change,” says brand development director Andrew Gamm, adding that it is easier to do when the price is $5 rather than $6.
“The response is always good. We always sell out. Customers respond real well to convenience,” Gamm says, so top-line sales go up even if per-item profit takes a bit of a hit.
The company and its franchisees currently operate about 10 tienditas, which focus on peak dinnertime business periods, especially Monday through Thursday.
“Apartment complexes love to have us out there,” Gamm adds. “We don’t have enough to go around to satisfy their requests.”
Apart from increasing sales, Gamm points out, changing locations also improves brand awareness.
“It’s funny,” he says. “You can be in a community for 10 or 15 years, and a few blocks away they don’t know you exist.”
Showing up outside an apartment can address that problem, he says.
