Being an Original

Just under six years ago, I wrote a brief article in Twin Cities Business Monthly about Twin Cities Originals, an organization started by several well-known restaurateurs in town, including Wayne Kostroski and Mark Haugen of Cuisine Concepts and Bill Kozlak of Jax Café and Kozy’s.

This movement resulted from independent restaurants feeling the squeeze from the growing presence of national chains. On the East Coast it started in Washington, DC where Robert Kinkead, the proprietor of the eponymous restaurant, started discussing this conundrum with others, including Haugen. Meanwhile, nearly simultaneously in Tucson, Ariz., several independent restaurant operators pulled together to form a group that they dubbed the Tucson Originals. Kinkead read about this group and began talking to them about banding together. By 1999 it became official. The united organization was called the Council of Independent Restaurants of America, or CIRA. (It now operates under the brand name Dine Originals.)

This show of scrappy, boot-strapping entrepreneurship struck a chord with restaurateurs across the county and they began forming chapters in other cities. Since the formation of the Tucson Originals, 17 other chapters, all with Originals in their titles, have formed in Albuquerque, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Madison, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Sarasota, Tucson, the Twin Cities, Washington DC and even one in New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington Valley. Plus, there are more than 100 member restaurants at large that don’t have official chapters in their area.

The Twin Cities Originals formed shortly after Tucson’s group and decided to grow slowly. They held their first event—a 13-course tasting dinner at Bravo Restaurant—on May 14, 2002. About a year after I wrote the article about them, I had the privilege of doing some marketing work for them. At that time, the members could be counted on two hands. Heated debates and discussions were a part of nearly every meeting, but collaboration against the chains triumphed over most disagreements because the need for a unifying organization was recognized. Since that time, the group has attracted almost 40 other local and like-minded independent restaurants as members.

The momentum, both locally and nationally, has come in fits and starts and, like running a restaurant, is a labor of love more than it is an easy road. As with many volunteer organizations, a few people often end up being the most active. One group, the Milwaukee Originals, disbanded due in part to the difficulty in getting consistent participation. By and large the chapters and independent members have soldiered on against the marching chains. “It’s kind of come and gone and come and gone a little bit,” says Haugen. “But on the local level we’ve grown a lot.”

The local group holds fundraising events at the Minneapolis Aquatennial and the St. Paul Winter Carnival, and has a quarterly gift certificate promotion selling $50 and $25 gift certificates at a 30 percent discount along with other promotions and marketing activities. They’ve even got some broadcast advertising on cable television in the works.

The interest in becoming a member and in the organization, is just one indicator that the threat to independents from chains is a real one. In an article about Dine Originals that ran in Time Magazine last year, the writer quoted a statistic from the NPD Group that said “traffic share for major and small chains has grown to 69 percent of overall restaurant visits this year. …Meanwhile, independents’ share has steadily dropped over the same period, to 31 percent.”

Chains run the gamut from high end to fast casual, and unified buying power gives them a competitive edge over independents. Chains are also seen as a safe bet by landlords who give them primo spots in developments, effectively shutting out independents on yet another level. Add to that rising costs in everything from food to health care, and a “non-essential” like marketing often takes a back seat among an independent owner’s worries.

And that was the original mission of both the national organization and the local ones: raising awareness of independents and marketing them as a unified entity. As the organization grew, more emphasis was placed on purchasing power and other initiatives, which were difficult to get consensus around.

Haugen, now the national chair of the Dine Originals, says that much of the ongoing strength of the group is in that original goal and he hopes to focus the group back on that mission. He also sees a great deal of possibility in recruiting individual members, rather than chapters. “The chapter model might be holding us back,” he says. “There’s a lot of work, a lot of politics in having a chapter, and at the same time we have seen that there’s a common cause here, and if local independent restaurants want to join, they should be able to, chapter or not.”

For more information about the local Twin Cities Originals visit www.tcoriginals.com or visit the national site for Dine Originals at www.dineoriginals.com.