FSR November 2022

SUBURBAN SPRAWL

North Texas, runway abounds. After all, suchmarkets are impeded by neither an overabundance of restaurants nor natu ral barriers like oceans and mountains. At the same time, Lancaster warns operators—especially those who are new to the area—not to assume that open ing a restaurant in Dallas-Fort Worth is a sure bet. Or that the window of oppor tunity will remain open indefinitely. “Coming out of Covid, there’s almost a shortage of restaurant space. It’s hard to find good locations,” he says. “We’re just having somuch growth from an influx of people coming from the coast and from different cities.” Lancaster has a leg-up in that he knows the area well and already has a foothold. Another arrow in the quiver is 33 Restaurant Group’s use of differen tiated brands, which makes for a more nimble expansion strategy. “We started realizing that our model of having different concepts within our arsenal allows us to look at a develop ment and say, ‘Hey, we love this devel opment. We love this location. Which of our concepts would be best here?’” he says. “If we only had one concept, one model … that development has to fit your goal, whereas we can say, this develop ment would be perfect for Union Bear or this would be perfect for Heritage Pizza.” And once 33 Restaurant Group becomes established in a suburb, it can use its existing cachet to bring in another concept. e group’s very first restaurant, Cadillac Pizza Pub, opened in McKin ney in 2012 and became a neighbor hood stronghold. So when an adjacent property opened up years later, the team leaped into action. In deciding what type of establish ment to put in the new spot, Lancaster considered the space itself, the McKin ney F&B scene, andmarket data, namely alcohol sales. On that last point, he uncovered certain disparities; some sub urbs were posting robust figures while others had only a fraction of the alcohol sales. He says Frisco was averaging about $300,000 per month, while McKinney topped out around $100,000. “Frisco, Mckinney, Plano—all these

HARVEY’S SERVES HEARTY DISHES, LIKE FUSILLI BOLOGNESE (LEFT), CARBONARA TOPPED WITH TOAST AND AN EGG (ABOVE), AND BUTTERMILK PANCAKES (BELOW).

“I like those weird, funky places where people come to visit from out of town, [and you say], ‘We’ve got to go here; you’ve got nothing like it back where you are like that.”

these people, [but] Dallas proper has all the cool restaurants and the nightlife and the experiences that come with the restaurants, and we’re like, let’s create that in the suburbs,” Lancaster says. e 33 Restaurant portfolio includes a trio of pizza-centric casual concepts (Cadillac Pizza Pub, Heritage Pizza and Taproom, and two-location Taverna Rossa), brewery-restaurant Union Bear, outdoor hangout e Yard, and Subur ban Yacht Club, which serves SoCal fare in landlocked Texas. With each of these, Lancaster says the intent was to bring the social activities and experiences of their younger, city-living days to the commu nities where they now resided since “we don’t have 30 minutes on a ursday to commute down to Dallas,” as he puts it. THE MARKET GAP Living in San Diego, Lancaster is espe cially attuned to how greatly restaurant real estate can vary by region. e coasts don’t offer much by way of whitespace (if anything, Lancaster thinks trendy fast casuals with small footprints would have the best chance). But in areas like

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NOVEMBER 2022