Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar in Huntington Beach took 15 years to get to 25 restaurants.
It plans to go national and double that total in the next three.
The casual-dining chain will have 25 locations at year-end; including Roseville, which opened in November, and Westminster, Colo., opening this month. One in Aurora is slated for early next year and would be No. 26.
The chain had 2016 systemwide sales of $117 million and average unit volume of $6.1 million.
If the hound can double its bone count—sniffing now in Chicago, the Washington, D.C., metro area, plus Maryland, Virginia, and Florida—the annual take could go to $300 million in five years.
It costs more than $3 million to build one; growth will come from debt and cash flow; Lazy Dog doesn’t franchise.
Chief Executive Chris Simms got more cash 18 months ago from majority owner and Los Angeles private equity investor Brentwood Associates to add C-level executives, enhance the menu and fine-tune operations—and said a so-far sleepy dog is rested and ready to run.
“We needed that solid culture and a team that can execute on it,” he said, to “scale with integrity.”
Bones
Simms co-founded Lazy Dog in 2003, backed by dad Tom Simms, a co-founder of then-Irvine-based Mimi’s Cafe (see “The Pack” sidebar, this page).
Mimi’s was founded in 1978. It had 135 locations when it was sold in 2009 to Bob Evans Farms Inc. in Ohio for $182 million; Bob Evans sold the chain in 2013 to Texas-based Le Duff America Inc. for $50 million.
Mimi’s declined during the recession and after failing to respond to the fast-casual trend in restaurants.
Lazy Dog hit a baker’s dozen locations as it turned 10 in 2013—the year Brentwood took its stake—and Simms had a response.
As Lazy Dog launched, “casual dining was value-engineered,” he said, with comfort food priced to move. “That was good for the finance guys but not for guests.”
He sat with his dad in his parents’ home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and chose to chase casual dining’s ability to help guests “celebrate and reconnect.”
People, he decided, “want to sit by the fire”—and maybe bring their best friends.
Spot
Dogs have an odd way of sitting—a knees-and-elbows sprawl, paws akimbo, all the while looking quite pleased with themselves. They find a spot they like and commence the round-and-round-and-round before settling down.
Watchers can be bemused.
It shows in Lazy Dog’s approach and its response to the rise of fast-casual competition in the last decade.
Simms once told a trade group that Lazy Dog, having found its spot, was making itself at home in the benefits of its niche, not barking up every trending tree.
“We dug in,” Simms said.
One example: No tabletop-tablet ordering because “we want to maintain that touchpoint with the customer.”
Another: sites can hit 10,000 square feet; casual dining competitors are often in the mid-7,000s.
It’s signed with restaurant delivery companies and works with guests who need to get in-and-out—“you can match guest experience to the current idiom”—but its teeth are clamped securely on the “casual” in casual dining.
Lazy Dog wants you to sit.
Pause.
Settle.
Order another round.
Canine Foodies
The decor—call it “mountain cabin modern”—and the menu back that.
Co-founder, part-owner and Executive Chef Gabriel Caliendo, at about the same time Chris and his dad were in front of a fire in Wyoming, knew casual dining could be inspired, perhaps even inspiring.
Menu items have included wok-fired calamari, ahi tuna burgers and black-and-bleu brick-oven pizza—the last leans to the Cajun-smoky-caramelized side of the stove—bolstered recently by blistered green beans and dishes with bison or poutine.
House-made desserts have been known to include huckleberry.
“Creative comfort food,” Simms said—“approachable innovation” on a menu that doesn’t scare the horses.
“Customers are coming around” to better food, and “you can pull trends from other areas,” whether international and regional food or higher-brow fare than casual dining is known for.
“Tastes are changing.”
The Hunt
This dodges the casual-dining mush.
“Larger chains—Applebee’s, TGI Fridays, Chili’s—still struggle with mediocre food and lack of differentiation,” said Chicago food consultant Darren Tristano, against Lazy Dog’s “good service, flavorful food and strong adult beverage program.”
Tristrano lauded Caliendo’s fine-dining chops and Lazy Dog’s enhancements to casual dining: “pushing the flavor and spice spectrum” even as “well-trained, knowledgeable service staff … steer new customers to more mainstream fare” if need be.
Simms has beefed up operations to prep for the cross-county race.
As the chain went all-in on casual dining during the fast-casual craze, it changed its restaurants’ name in 2013 to Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar from Lazy Dog Café—leaning to the sit-and-stay model over the sidewalk café-au-lait-and-madeleine vibe.
This year it added two C-level executives to its senior team (see “Big Dogs” sidebar, page 8).
Since the 2013 buy-in from Brentwood, the chain’s tested its model in other markets, entering Texas and Nevada with five locations between them.
Nineteen are in California.
