Theme restaurants are such a strange, but obvious, concept. You go out to dinner for an escape—an escape from your house, your kitchen—and you’re expecting to pay good money for that escape. So the concept of the theme restaurant fits right in—why not escape your life, too? But it still begs the question—why do we so willingly transport ourselves to a place so obviously fake? Why do we want to go to a restaurant that mimics a place that never was real in the first place or no longer exists in the real world? What defines a theme restaurant anyway?
Every restaurant, in essence, has a theme. A hamburger shop sells hamburgers, but also usually a bit of Americana—1950’s style jukeboxes, strawberry milk shakes, style that makes it look like a car repair shop. The difference, with a theme restaurant, is that all of the elements of the restaurants necessarily follow the theme—the bathrooms, the food, the waiting areas—and I would say, the theme is exaggerated to an extreme or a purposefully inauthentic degree. In addition, the food, in general, is of secondary concern to both the restaurateurs and the clientele.
When I was a kid, I always went to a Japanese restaurant that was built, and popular, in the 1960’s. It was called Mount Fuji Inn and had a neon backdrop of the mountain, a koi pond with a backlit blue mirror and a bunch of little huts to eat in. The food was fine—standard sushi and tempura fare—but people went there for the atmosphere. Or, they did, back in the 1960’s. Now, the only people who touch the place are in their 60’s and 70’s or are hipster twenty-somethings, holding onto a nostalgia of the nostalgic 1960’s.
Another place we always went when I was a kid was called Brother Sebastian’s and it was designed to look like an old monastery. The salad bar was in the library and usually we were seated in the chaplain’s study or the small chapel, complete with stained glass with pictures of the Virgin Mary. I always thought it was kind of weird—people went on romantic dates and held hands with mother Mary looking on—but was also really popular. And I think that no matter how cool—or strange—the interior, people went there for the food. Bottom line, it was an excellent steakhouse.
And that’s one of the reasons experts say that theme restaurants fail. More often than not, theme restaurants are going for the tourist dollar. Yes, tourists go to a Planet Hollywood or a Cheesecake Factory because it’s something exciting. But if tourists are only coming once, and coming for the novelty, focus on food is unnecessary. Food also isn’t the focus when a restaurant focuses on creating excitement and novelty in the atmosphere.
Especially now, this concept is failing. Chain restaurants are ubiquitous, so in order to be successful, tourists would have to eat at the Rainforest Café in Seattle and Cincinnati and New York—and if the food isn’t good and the concept is no longer novel, they won’t come back for a second visit. If every town is going to have the same tourist destinations (i.e. Hard Rock Café, P.F. Chang’s, etc…etc…) the food, and not the theme, has to be what keeps the customers coming back.
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