Rosenthal selling Max restaurants share to partners
After more than 3 decades, dining entrepreneur decides to retire
After a more than three-decade career at the forefront of Greater Hartford’s dining out scene, Richard Rosenthal — the entrepreneurial force behind the Max restaurants — is retiring from the company he founded in 1986, selling his share to his partners.
Rosenthal’s flagship restaurant Max Downtown has been a Hartford landmark since the mid-1990s and the Max name also became well established in the surrounding suburbs — Avon, Glastonbury, West Hartford — and just over the state line in Massachusetts.
Rosenthal will remain as a consultant, most likely involved in menu development and scouting locations for new restaurants. Rosenthal said Monday the company’s management structure in which restaurants are run by partners in the company will position the company well as he steps back from a day-to-day post.
“It made me feel this restaurant group could go on very strongly without me, with my limited guidance as a consultant,” Rosenthal said in a telephone interview from Florida.
The collection of 10 restaurants cannot be described as a chain because each brand is separate and distinct, ranging from the more upscale Max Downtown to Savoy Pizzeria in West Hartford and Max Burger, with two locations, in West Hartford and Longmeadow, Mass.
Rosenthal, who will turn 65 this month, said he also considered in making the decision both his age and the long, exhausting slog through a pandemic that is now in its third year.
“The pandemic has been a punch in everyone’s gut,” Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal declined to comment on the amount for which he sold his share of the company.
“It’s not a huge number,” Rosenthal said. “I’m more excited about these guys progressing than me cashing out.”
Scott Smith, who joined the company in the early 1990s and long has served as chief operating officer, will succeed Rosenthal as chief executive of a company that
now employs 900.
Smith will share top managing with Steven Abrams, Rosenthal’s college roommate who also has been with the Max restaurants since the early days. Abrams is a partner in Max Downtown, Max’s Oyster Bar and Trumbull Kitchen.
“Everyone can have the confidence that we are going to continue on and run the type of company that everyone has been accustomed to,” Smith said Monday. “People shouldn’t expect a huge change.”
Rosenthal said he started seriously thinking about stepping away from day-today responsibilities about a year ago when there was an offer to buy the restaurant company.
“It was a strategy to take Max’s and turn it into a bigger number, Rosenthal said. “We never ran this business as a business to sell. We opened a restaurant and our goal was to be great, not what our next deal was.”
“And this guy was going to be about the next deal, the next phase, which private equity company was going to buy us, that kind of thing,” Rosenthal said. “It was going to change the culture drastically.”
Rosenthal declined to name the buyer.
Smith credited Rosenthal with the patience to wait for the right time and opportunity to open a new restaurant, in one instance waiting five years between openings.
Deep roots in Hartford dining
Rosenthal — long interested in the restaurant business back to his days busing and waiting tables in high school — first staked out turf in Hartford in 1986, opening Max-on-main with his wife, Vicki. The restaurant was quickly a hit with reservations booked for weeks.
As an entrepreneur, Rosenthal also saw opportunities in the suburbs, first opening up Max A Mia Ristorante in Avon and Max Amore in Glastonbury.
Rosenthal rode the heady wave of the go-go 1980s, but he also saw the lows of a devastating recession that hit Hartford hard in the early 1990s and then again in 2008.
“The pandemic has definitely been the biggest challenge,” Rosenthal said.
A decade after opening Max-on-main, Rosenthal doubled the size of his downtown space, closing Max-on-main and launching Max Downtown on the ground floor of Cityplace,
where it operates today.
Rosenthal has closed just one other restaurant, Max Amore, in Glastonbury. He said the restaurant did not go out of business, but, after 25 years, Max Amore had run its course, as sales slipped.
“We felt we could do a refresh, but it wouldn’t be fresh,” Rosenthal said. “It was a little tired there, and we didn’t want to re-invent it, and the rent was very high.”
Rosenthal’s success came with his keen eye for changing tastes in menus and experience. In 2019, a $1.6 million renovation of Max Downtown was aimed also at attracting a hip, younger crowd and getting away from the image of the restaurant being “your father’s place.”
Demanding excellence, Rosenthal acknowledged Monday that he could be tough on employees, more so in the early days of the company.
With Rosenthal’s departure the name of the company will change from Max Restaurant Group to Max Hospitality, recognizing that that “great food and service” are part of a larger experience of hospitality, Smith said.
The fall-out from the pandemic still lingers, Smith said.
“We’re still picking up the pieces from Covid,” Smith said. “We’ve always had low turnover and so, even though we still have a lot of veterans working for us, we probably have 10-15 people in each restaurant that are relatively new and getting them established and getting them to understand our standards — our ‘Never Say No’ attitude — is a trick.”
Scott Dolch, president and chief executive of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, praised Rosenthal’s contributions both in dining and in the community.
“In addition to employing hundreds and hundreds of people, Rich and his partners have been leaders in their communities, supporting important causes throughout the greater Hartford region,” Dolch said.
During the pandemic, the Max Cares Foundation provided aid to displaced restaurant workers and their families, even beyond the Max workforce.
Though Rosenthal is now stepping away, he said he is protective of the legacy of the restaurant group.
“Max was named after the my grandfather, so I have a family responsibility there,” Rosenthal said.