A new place in the same space
By Mike Mitchelson

As the saying goes, it’s all about location. And for a few metro area restaurant owners in recent months, keeping that ideal location and boosting business meant changing their concept.

Most famously, the acclaimed fine-dining Restaurant Levain closed last New Years Eve and reopened recently as a neighborhood bistro with lower-priced fare, Café Levain. On Washington Avenue in Minneapolis, the high-end restaurant Nochee closed and reopened as Harry’s Food & Cocktails, and in Minnetonka, Big Buck Roadhouse became the Italian restaurant Prima. Same owners, same locations, different concepts.

Nochee performed well during its three-year life, said Dwight Bonewell, co-owner of that restaurant and Harry’s, which took its place. But he recognized a problem with Nochee about a year into its run. “Nochee was a hybrid restaurant, where we were doing higher-end dining with this entertainment venue after about 10:30 at night,” he said. “The problem was, we started having crossover issues with some of our customers.”

People would have a great dining experience, but often leave later in the evening when the restaurant transitioned to a club, Bonewell said. Those diners often left with an impression that Nochee really wasn’t a place for them. “We weren’t going to be able to attract those dinner customers again if we continued to do that.”

After that first year, Bonewell and his then partner scaled back the entertainment aspect of the business to Friday and Saturday nights, and bringing in more jazz instrumental music during happy hour and the dinner segment. But it still wasn’t sitting well with Bonewell. “I personally didn’t want to be in that entertainment (part of it),” he said. “I had a business partner who focused on that, and it wasn’t my cup of tea. I’ve always been focused on food. So we wound up parting ways. We were never a full-fledged, kind of Dakota Jazz Club, but at the same time, people wouldn’t take us as a serious restaurant.”

Bonewell and Harry’s co-owner Adam Smith decided Harry’s would be a “full-fledged neighborhood bar and restaurant.” (The two also own Arezzo Ristorante in Edina.) The concept would fit better with the developing neighborhood, which is now filled with riverfront condos and the Guthrie Theater. “With all of them in close proximity all those people leaving (Nochee) at 2-2:30 in the morning, you have all these people you’re disturbing,” he said.

Pre-theater business from the Guthrie was strong at Nochee, and has remained so with Harry’s, he said, but Harry’s is able to capture the neighborhood residents, the pre-game Metrodome crowd and hotel guests.

The redesign, a modern take on the traditional supper club, is a tribute to Bonewell’s grandfather, Harry Snyder, a longtime chef for several St. Paul restaurants. Nochee’s problems gave Bonewell and designers a good idea of where to make improvements. Walking into Nochee, Bonewell described, customers were squeezed through a narrow bar area to reach the dining room, which, he said, made people uncomfortable and sent a signal that the focus was more on bar business than food.

Now in the main dining area, the bar remains prominent in Harry’s, and includes televisions to serve the regulars who want to watch a sporting event—but those TVs are tucked into the soffit above and are not visible to those in the main dining room. “We’re not a sports bar,” he said. “And we don’t want our dining patrons to feel like they’re dining in a sports bar.”

Further into the restaurant, dining spaces become more formal, Bonewell said, all the way back to a dining room to seat 50.

A major focus on the redevelopment was price point—menu items were to be in the $12-$20 range. “It was getting back to the comfort food, the retro supper club thing, yet kind of urban—melding the fine dining and casual together,” he said. “You can get the best burger in town, or New York strip or the special every night of the week.”

The result? Thus far, business has been much steadier than with Nochee. “We’re seeing, for example, the concept works much better with lunch,” Bonewell said. “Also for dinner, we’re building this loyal following in the residential district.”


Primo spot for Prima

Big Buck Roadhouse in Minnetonka was also about three years old when the plug was recently pulled. The restaurant was the third concept for husband-and-wife owners Jennifer Jackson King and Eliot King, whose other restaurants, Prima and Three Fish have flourished in Minneapolis.

Big Buck opened to critical acclaim in Minnetonka, and filled a supper club and bar niche for the western suburbs. Business was fine, Jackson King said, but fatigue played a role in switching the restaurant to a second Prima location. Three different restaurants translated into 50 different vendors and non-interchangeable managers. “We’re just trying to ease our lives operationally,” she said. “Our managers are now interchangeable between the two Primas, purchasing and recipe-ing are the same, and from an operational standpoint it just affords the two of us to be less stressed.”

There was another motivation—when they purchased the property three years ago, they wanted to open a Prima. “But Sydney’s was down the street at the time, so we felt there was a lot of pizza and pasta going on out there already,” she said. “Sydney’s closed a year and half ago, so that opened up the opportunity for that type of concept again.”

The couple also wants to open a fourth restaurant—most likely another Prima—and wanted to test to see if the concept was “truly marketable,” Jackson King said. “Thus far, I think we feel pretty good about it. … It’s more approachable fare; we get lots of families, it’s convenient to take it to go, it’s the price point everyone’s looking for—the $10 $14 range—in this day and age. (It’s) healthy, it’s lighter fare, and just approachable from a weeknight standpoint.”

Remodeling was relatively easy. Jackson King said they slowly changed the artwork on the walls during a couple week span, switched over the exterior signage and then closed down for a weekend to do a “super deep cleaning, and brought the whole staff in for two nights to taste and try everything.”

With the switch to a second Prima, retraining staff was relatively easy. “We could send our existing employees to Prima in Minneapolis over a two week period to see all the food and train there, and pull people from Minneapolis to help us out (over here).”

There are a few differences at the new Minnetonka Prima, including a full bar and pizza oven left over from Big Buck. And for the Big Buck fans, they kept a signature hamburger on the menu. “The die-hard Big Buck people are glad to see it stayed,” Jackson King said.

Aside from a few, hard core “die hards” who are still mourning the demise of Big Buck, the vast majority of customers are pleased with the switch, she added. “There’s this whole other resurgence of people who were Prima loyalists in South Minneapolis, and then their families grew larger and they moved out west. They’re thankful to have Prima in their neighborhood.”

And the next Prima? “We’re putting all our effort in this location, so maybe a fourth Prima in next 18 to 20 months,” Jackson King said. “We’re pretty cautious people.”