And while he describes himself as so shy that he cannot introduce himself to strangers, he saw the restaurant business as a way to be sociable. He was attracted to the restaurant business because some of his friends had succeeded in it. Weinstein, who is 44 years old, had a small investment-banking business in the early 1970's but had to close it when a stock-market slide left him short of capital. ''We didn't want to get a 'Ye Olde Train Station.' '' ''We identified four or five major restaurauteurs that were creative and that didn't have blinders on,'' said Lehr Jackson, one of the partners. of Baltimore, one of the developers in the Union Station project.
That diversity was part of the reason Ark was approached for the Union Station restaurant by Williams, Jackson, Ewing Inc. In New York, Ark's restaurants and bars are all different, ranging from the Western-style Rodeo Bar, on Third Avenue near 27th Street, to Big Kahuna, a surf bar on Broadway near Houston Street, to the ultrachic B. Now, convinced that it must stick to urban environments, Ark's management has expanded into Boston, where the company is running three restaurants at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and into Washington, where it is building a huge restaurant in Union Station. The company would probably only get into trouble, he said, if the many young, relatively affluent people who frequent its restaurants suddenly could not afford to eat out so often. ''I think they have very good control over their future,'' he said. Roger Lipton, a managing director at Ladenburg Thalmann & Company, a stock brokerage, who follows the restaurant business, said the New Jersey failure appeared to be an aberration. ''I have worked for restaurants where bills would come in and they were never questioned,'' said Vincent Pascal, a vice president who is in charge of operations. All bills must be reviewed and payment authorized by top executives. The executives also meet with managers weekly to make sure labor costs and revenues are in balance. The company says the system has cut its cost of food and beverages, as a percentage of sales, to 29 percent from 31 percent in the last few years. That way a vendor cannot give Ark a good price on one item to get business on other ingredients at less favorable prices. Five vendors bid on each of the 3,000 items the company buys each week. Each day the restaurants tell Ark's headquarters, in Manhattan's garment district, what food they need. ''In most restaurants,'' she said, ''one partner drinks, one takes drugs, one gambles and one tries to hold the business together.''Īrk controls its costs with a central computerized purchasing system. Smith, whose interest in cooking tempted her to open a restaurant, said she had offers from other backers, but chose Ark because of its strong management. Smith's, a gathering place in the theater district for a multiracial crowd.
She has managed to make their restaurant, B. But there is one glaring, painful exception for a company that is proud of its food: its restaurants rarely receive any critical acclaim.Īlthough Ark executives generally create their own ideas for restaurants, the company went into a partnership a year and a half ago with Barbara Smith, a model whose face has appeared on the covers of Mademoiselle, Ebony and Essence. Indeed, Ark has managed to please many kinds of people. They have consistently managed to intuit the urban sensibility and translate it into restaurants that have become emblems of their times and places.
He is the president of the Ark Restaurants Corporation, a company whose 17 restaurants reflect the diverse interests of a group of executives who have worked together for some years. Weinstein, who sometimes wears a black Harley-Davidson sweatshirt to the office and who readily describes himself as perverse, has put his affection for gritty urban life to good use: by going into marginal Manhattan neighborhoods before the rents are high, he has wangled long leases that have helped make his restaurants profitable. ''You don't understand,'' she told the neighbor. Weinstein's partners urged that the wall remain untouched.
Weinstein's restaurant, offered to fix up his property so it would fit in better with its glossy new neighbor. It seems that the neighbor, pleased by the gentrification signified by Mr. MICHAEL WEINSTEIN is showing off the rooftop cafe of one of his restaurants in New York, pointing to the crumbling wall of the adjoining building and gleefully recounting a story.
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