Ex-Olive Garden boss sees big things for new company
The offices of FoodFirst Global Restaurants on the ninth floor of downtown Orlando’s CNL Tower II are not the bustling headquarters of a national restaurant company — at least not yet.
Only a handful of offices are occupied, boxes are still being unpacked and the main floor is full of empty desks, awaiting workers to bolster the upstart restaurant company.
Chairman and CEO Brad Blum’s corner office overlooks Orlando and beyond, a region that has fostered restaurant industry successes such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Ruth’s Chris, Sonny’s Barbecue and more.
Blum thinks FoodFirst could one day be listed among those nationally known companies.
In what could be the final and toughest act of the 64-year-old Blum’s career, he’s trying to build
a new restaurant company, starting with the acquisition of two struggling restaurant brands in Brio Tuscan Grille and Bravo Cucina Italiana.
In the next few months, he said there will be 40 employees in the Orlando office. FoodFirst is closing a deal for a new 6,000square-foot culinary test kitchen downtown as well.
But a turnaround at Brio and Bravo are just the first steps. Blum and investors in FoodFirst Global Restaurants also plan to make acquisitions and develop new restaurant brands, he said.
If anyone has the resume to do it, it might be Blum, who ran Olive Garden for seven years.
After that he was CEO at Burger King and Romano’s Macaroni Grill before spending three more years back at Darden on its board of directors until he resigned in March to embark on his new venture.
“It might take the rest of [Blum’s] career, but he has the passion … and he clearly likes Italian restaurants,” said John Gordon, a restaurant consultant with Pacific Capital Management in San Diego. “He’s a well-respected restaurant operator and really drills down into the basics.”
Building a new restaurant company
Blum, along with a Brazilian investment group called GP Investments, spent $100 million to purchase Bravo Brio Restaurant Group and take it private. Blum said he put a significant investment into the company himself.
Since the acquisition, the investment group also spent $15 million paying down debt from Brio and Bravo. There will also be a “few million dollars” put into a fund for investing in the company, he said.
“This won’t be the normal private equity deal where they come in and try to make as much money as they can and sell it,” he said. “This is a long-term investment.”
FoodFirst announced it was moving to Orlando in mid-November, choosing the Sunshine State over Brio and Bravo’s current headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. It will keep a sizable workforce in Ohio to support the Brio and Bravo operations there. But the core of FoodFirst’s executive team will be in Orlando.
“There is a lot of talent in this part of the country,” Blum said. “We don’t only plan to be in casual dining, but this is a bit of the epicenter of casual dining. We think this is going to be a good headquarters for us.”
Some of that talent includes former colleagues from Blum’s past with Orlando ties.
Dave Pickens, another former Olive Garden president at Darden, was tapped as FoodFirst’s president and chief operating officer. Mike Ellis, another former Darden executive and most recently at Ruby Tuesday, is the new chief development officer.
Turning around Bravo and Brio
FoodFirst may be a new company in one sense, but it inherits a lot of history and baggage with its first acquisition. The restaurants serve two segments of the Italian restaurant scene. Brio Tuscan Grille has 61 restaurants and serves a Northern Italian-themed menu of seafood, steaks and pasta. Bravo Cucina Italiana, with 44 locations, focuses on American-style Italian pastas.
The combined companies have about 10,000 employees.
Brio and Bravo have struggled in recent years. It built up $42 million in debt, closed unprofitable locations and struggled as revenues dropped.
“They were dank and dirty, and they have these big restaurants that never got really busy,” Gordon said. “And with Brio, they didn’t establish much of a name for themselves in terms of corporate dining, which is big for making a profit and keeping busy on off-peak nights.”
The FoodFirst team, including chief culinary officer John Imbriolo, introduced a new test menu at the Winter Park and Mall at Millenia locations for Brio.
That menu is one of the first moves to rebrand Brio into a more upscale casual dining restaurant and put some separation between it and Bravo, a more traditional Italian brand in line with Olive Garden.
The average check at Brio in 2017 was just more than $27 for dinner, compared with about $21 at Bravo, according to regulatory reports from before the sale. Blum thinks Brio’s average check could go higher as it introduces new dishes and emphasizes alcohol sales.
The new Brio menu includes more seafood such as a ravioli appetizer stuffed with thick chunks of lobster, crab cakes that Imbriolo said are “mostly crab and less cake,” and a Caprese salad with Buffalo mozzarella cheese.
In time, FoodFirst plans to rename Brio Tuscan Grille to Brio Italian Mediterranean. Bravo Cucina Italiana will become Bravo Fresh Italian.
Nicole Jordan-Gant, who lives in Seminole County, said she eats at Brio about once a month, partially because its easy to get a seat.
“I love their environment, and they are very friendly,” she said. “I did try something new last time I went, and it was absolutely delicious.”
Both Bravo and Brio restaurants undergo remodels in the coming years, including a handful starting this year to make them brighter and more modern, Blum said.
Expanding beyond
Blum emphasizes running an efficient restaurant company, focused on the basics of cooking good, consistent food and using its size to keep prices down.
One strategy, Blum said, is to cut the number of ingredients and focus on higher quality produce and meats.
“You don’t have to be more complex to be better,” he said.
Blum said the new culinary and beverage training center will be close to the current headquarters office in the CNL Tower II. At about 6,000 square feet, it will be roughly the size of a full-size casual dining restaurant and built to test new recipes and train chefs and managers.
“The idea is all about innovation and being flexible,” he said.
After Brio and Bravo are put on the right course, FoodFirst will start looking for other restaurants to buy or develop.
“We’re not just focused on being a casual dining company,” Blum said. “There are a lot of areas in the restaurant industry we are interested in.”