Mövenpick’s founder serves restaurant idea to Innisfil
Reichert opens Marché up north Similar in concept, only in a log cabin
Two years after his controversial split with the Mövenpick restaurant chain, the once high- flying Jorg Reichert is back in business — this time with a restaurant south of Barrie.
Reichert’s new venture, the Innisfil Heights Marché, on the east side of Highway 400, south of Innisfil Beach Rd., bears some striking similarities to his former Mövenpick Marchés in Toronto. Customers pick what they want to eat from various specialty stations where the meal is prepared in front of them, whether it’s pizza or sushi. The restaurant doesn’t violate any non- compete clauses Reichert signed when he was forced out of Richtree Markets Inc., the company he founded and which for many years held the North American franchise rights to the Mövenpick name.
Reichert agreed not to compete with Richtree in areas near current Richtreeowned restaurants for 16 months from Oct. 28, 2003. The man who now runs Richtree said he was aware of Reichert’s activities but did not want to comment on them.
“It’s premature to comment,” said Richtree’s chief executive officer Colin West, the man Reichert fired at the height of Richtree’s problems but who was reinstated a day later by Richtree’s board of directors.
In any case, Reichert said, the Marché concept isn’t exclusive to the wellknown multinational Swiss food chain as he discovered during a recent market research trip through Europe in preparation for his latest venture.
“ We went all over Europe, from Holland to Germany, Austria and Switzerland and we checked what’s in and what’s out. We came across some very interesting concepts,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday. “ It’s a market concept. Very contemporary.” The restaurant, housed in a sprawling two- storey log cabin, features gleaming stainless steel appliances, Europeanstyle chalkboard menus and huge drum- shaped hanging lights. A local architect designed the restaurant and local and European craftspeople created many of the fixtures, Reichert said.
Reichert, Richtree and Mövenpick all parted amid a flurry of lawsuits and corporate infighting that saw Reichert forced out in October 2003.
Richtree subsequently settled with Mövenpick, gave up its right to the franchise and restructured under court- ordered bankruptcy protection with new owners. The surviving Mövenpick restaurants were renamed Richtree Markets. The company is now back in expansion mode, West said, with a restaurant opening this fall in College Park in downtown Toronto. When the dust settled, Reichert said he considered retiring. Under the agreement, he was to get $ 3.3 million, but Reichert didn’t get paid, he said, because the company filed for bankruptcy protection three months after it signed the settlement deal with him, so like other creditors, he didn’t get what he was owed. When Richtree filed for bankruptcy protection, it owed its largest creditor $ 8.5 million.
Reichert decided to go back to the work he has known and loved since he was a teenager. “ This is my life. I have always loved restaurants. I love fresh food,” Reichert said, a day after a launch party at his new Innisfil Marché drew an estimated 2,000 people. The new restaurant, which seats about 480, will emphasize fresh, local foods and hopes to cash in on one of Canada’s fastest- growing regions.