A commitment to good food and guest service — and a laser focus on customer retention — has helped the Max Restaurant Group of Hartford weather the economic downturn that has hit the restaurant industry hard.
The group’s restaurants — seven in Connecticut and one in Springfield — each has its own unique concept. But they share an approach born from a fresh look at their operations in hard times.
Despite the recession, Max’s management expanded employee benefits as a way to assure it can deliver on its commitment to creating an exclusive dining experience for its customers. And that investment is paying off.
From high-end dining at Max Downtown, to Italian specialties at Max Amore and Max a Mia, to the group’s latest concept in Max Fish, the focus of everyone involved — from management to the servers — is on presenting a good product with the utmost in hospitality.
“We look at hospitality and service as two distinct areas,” said Steven Abrams, co-owner of Max Downtown and the Max Restaurant Group. “We tell the employees ‘Don’t be satisfied with what you’re doing.’ We look for ways to increase hospitality and service.”
When the economy took a nose-dive in the fall of 2008, Max Restaurant Group’s business took a small hit, but Abrams said the downturn forced management to reconsider how it was doing business.
“We tried to watch and cut our expenses while improving both our food quality and our hospitality,” he said. “We were very careful not to cut back on everything, while keeping food portions up.”
Abrams said to be successful in an economic downturn, management decided to partner with the employees and get them to buy in and look at the big picture of guest satisfaction and the long-term outlook of the business.
“We had to show them that what’s good for the customers is good for them and good for us,” he said. “You have to keep the guests happy and satisfied.”
Keeping the employees content has been a priority for management. Scott Smith, vice president and chief operating officer for Max Restaurant Group, said the restaurant group reassessed its benefits package to help retain the company’s long-time employees.
“We realized what we were doing wasn’t reaching enough,” he said. “We’ve reconfigured our benefits to provide access to health care for our full-time staff — those who work over 30 hours a week — and we will contribute 50 percent of the costs.”
Smith said the restaurants’ employees are proud to work for Max Restaurant Group.
“Having benefits at all, and paid vacation and things like that … it’s very important for people who have families,” he said. “All those things help develop a good relationship with employees that they know they can depend on.”
In order to keep the guests pleased with the Max Restaurant Group’s offerings, the group has increased its menu items featuring locally grown produce and other products, such as cheese, seafood, and grass-fed beef and pork.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve been trying to push our restaurants in the direction of using local products,” said Smith. “First and foremost, it’s about making our restaurants a place where people could come and be in touch with local farms. We’re promoting some fantastic local farmers and artisan cheese-makers, which really benefits our menu offerings.”
Smith said the restaurants take advantage of the local growing season, especially in good years like 2010.
“We can have fresh, ripe tomatoes just about 12 months out of the year, but when the native season hits it’s just terrific getting tomatoes picked just a couple hours before.”
Smith said the customers, growing more conscious of buying local products, are happy to support other local businesses.
“We have never encouraged our chefs to get the best price,” Smith said. “We have encouraged them to get the best product. In the summer, we think the best stuff is local.”
Some of the local produce featured on Max restaurant menus is from Urban Oaks Organic Farm in New Britain. Claudine McLachlan, Urban Oaks’ wholesale coordinator, said it’s a triple win situation — for the restaurants, the farm and the consumer.
“Any restaurant that puts us on the menu is making more people aware that we’re here,” McLachlan said. “It provides healthier eating for their customers, customers know where their food came from, and it helps keep Connecticut dollars in Connecticut.”
McLachlan said Scott Miller, chef at Max’s Oyster Bar, is one of Urban Oaks’ best customers, and he brought a couple of the other Max chefs to the farm over the summer to show them what a great resource they had at their fingertips.
This past growing season and into the fall, McLachlan said she has sold a wide variety of produce to the restaurant group, including salad greens, frying peppers, potatoes, leeks, squash and apples. She said Miller was still ordering from the farm, which also sells organic produce grown locally at other farms, into November.
“Celeriac, red onions and leeks are hard to find locally (this time of year) so he snatched them up,” she said. “There is a one- or two-week cycle that we can get it, and then the celeriac is gone. He has his finger on the pulse of what’s available.”
While increasing the local food presence on the restaurants’ menus, the restaurant group also was mindful about resorting to deep discounts to reduce costs and keep customers, Smith said.
“We didn’t go overboard on trying to discount,” he said. “We knew that people wanted a quality dining experience and quality food. We’ve really kept an eye on our food, making sure we had the right people in place and serving the best products that we possibly could.”
Max management has focused more on marketing the past couple of years, searching for fresh ideas to keep a strong customer base. The group launched Max Vantage, a customer loyalty card, nearly two years ago. Abrams said the card has been a huge success.
“It’s beyond our wildest expectations,” he said. “Customers we’ve had for years and years were a force of asking for a frequent diner card and we decided to listen to them. It’s really about rewarding loyalty.”
Customers can use their cards to accumulate points that can be cashed in for gift cards, Max’s custom blend wine, Max Cuvee (made by Napa Valley vineyard Girard Winery), or a special visit at home from a Max chef, who will cook for the customer and 12 friends. Soon, Max Vantage card holders will have the opportunity to cash in their points with a select group of local retailers.
“It encourages more regular dining,” Smith said. “People know what they’re getting here. If there is a couple that dines out four times in the course of a month, I think we’re very lucky if we get them two times. The idea of the Vantage card is that maybe this is enough of an incentive to get them a third or maybe a fourth time.”
