Taziki’s owner finds region suits his tastes

Besides the occasional University of Arkansas Razorback football game, Tommy Keet admits that he had not spent a great deal of time in Northwest Arkansas over the years.

So Keet, the “T” in familyowned JTJ Restaurants, had no expectations of what he would find when visiting last year. Keet was in Rogers speaking during a conference about the process of site selection for Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafes that his family had opened in Conway and Little Rock.

As it turned out Keet didn’t just educate the audience on picking the perfect spot for a restaurant, he wound up getting a bit of an education himself.

“I spent the rest of that af-

ternoon just driving around with my eyes so wide,” Keet said. “I called my dad and said, ‘We’ve got to get up here. We’ve got to plant a flag in Northwest Arkansas.’”

Within a year of Keet’s speaking appearance, the franchise will have two locations in the region. Bentonville gets its own 122-seat, including patio, Taziki’s at 1000 SE Walton Blvd. in December. Fayetteville’s 130-seat location at 95 E. Joyce Blvd. opened in July and set an opening-day record for the Birminghambased franchise.

Taziki’s, owned and operated in Arkansas by dad Jim, and sons Tommy and Jake Keet, saw slow, steady expansion in central Arkansas. First, came a Little Rock store in 2008 and then another in 2011. Conway was next in 2012.

Rogers is being considered for a third, though it will be critical to find a spot that doesn’t wind up competing for business with the same restaurant. While the opening of three stores since 2012 might seem aggressive by JTJ’s initial growth standards, this isn’t a case of adding restaurants simply for the sake of adding restaurants.

Those same principles that Tommy Keet outlined for listeners at the 2012 conference, especially traffic count, apply to these local openings. Looking at the number of vehicles that pass through a given area has become an important factor to consider when site selecting.

Research revealed that 39,000 cars per day pass the Walton Boulevard storefront. That’s higher even than the 38,000 in Little Rock that pass the Chenal Parkway restaurant or the 31,000 reported for Cantrell Road.

Success in Fayetteville also led to a slightly more aggressive strategy in Northwest Arkansas. No franchise in the chain has put up better opening-day numbers. Fayetteville missed a Taziki’s opening week record by about $800.

First-week sales aren’t always an indicator of longterm success. Sometimes the new can wear off, and diners lose interest, but that doesn’t seem to be the case so far.

It also helped that the same person selling the Fayetteville location, which formerly housed Burger Life, also had property for lease in Bentonville. That cut down on the time it took to find property that fit what the Keet family wanted.

“This was the first time we’ve done two [locations] at once,” Tommy Keet said. “That made for a faster expansion than normal.” If you have a tip, call Chris Bahn at (479) 365-2972 or e-mail him at cbahn@nwaonline.com