Duke's appeals to all
By Katherine Nichols
Advertiser Staff Writer
It was every restaurant owner's fantasy. On a sun-drenched afternoon last month, about 2,200 people gathered around Duke's Canoe Club Waikiki to see Jimmy Buffett play an acoustic concert at the barefoot bar, giving the venue a free-spending crowd and plenty of buzz for not much effort. Buffett had requested the gig after watching local musician Henry Kopono perform there the previous year.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
"You turn around and there's Diamond Head and tiki torches going over there," Buffett said in an interview after his concert. "I was playing to the beach ... and there was a couple sitting on their longboards out there, and I thought, 'Damn, that's cool. What must this look like from the waves?'" He laughed. "Where else could you do that?"
Duke's Canoe Club Waikiki servers Chris Nii and Yvonne Redmond dispense food as well as a whiff of aloha to Dan and Melinda MacKenzie and their children Danielle, Gordie and Ian. The family was visiting from Issaquah, Wash.
Buffett's ocean-loving, relaxed image fit right into the carefully crafted aura of Duke's. It's one restaurant that has mastered the combination of location, food, service, entertainment and clientele that adds up to popularity.
Duke's is among the busiest restaurants in the Islands — serving 2,000 meals a day, according to general manager Ross Anderson. It's a success story among the nearly 3,000 restaurants statewide in an industry that employs 50,000 people and adds $2.5 billion to the economy.
After Sept. 11, when all of Waikiki suffered, Duke's suffered less. It rebounded more quickly. Henry Kapono still performs every Sunday (despite the presence of his namesake restaurant across town), and the Lilikoi Sisters can inspire servers to break into hula in the aisles.
As one of the few restaurants where both residents and tourists mingle with unusually good results, Duke's has enjoyed prosperity since it replaced the faltering Perry's at the base of the Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach in 1992.
Perry's had sales of about $1.6 million per year and was steadily losing money, said David Allaire, senior vice president of T S Restaurants, the parent company of Duke's and 11 other similar restaurants on Maui and Kaua'i and in California. "We are over 10 times that today," Allaire said.
Creating a feel of Hawai'i
Many in the restaurant business wonder if they, too, can market the same allure. T S Restaurants has repeatedly tried to use the surrounding culture and environment and "reflect the sense of place where the restaurant sits," Allaire said.
Customers feel that too. "When you think of Hawai'i, you think of sitting on the beach ... and Duke's is it," said Roy Speaks, a Schofield Barracks resident who said he visits Duke's every couple of months. "Realistically, you could see just about anything from right here."
Competitors with the same proximity to salt and sand take a different approach to avoid going head to head with Duke's.
"We're mutually beneficial to each other," said Cynthia Rankin, director of public relations for the Sheraton Moana Surfrider and the Sheraton Princess Ka'iulani. Rankin said Duke's Canoe Club caters to a younger clientele than the nearby Banyon Veranda at the Sheraton Moana, which serves around 600 meals a day.
"The atmosphere is totally different," said Rankin. The Banyon Veranda and Courtyard strive for a nostalgic, Hawaiiana feel that welcomes more mature visitors and residents. When trying to explain the type of entertainment they feature, Rankin chuckled and said, "We would never put Buffett in the Courtyard."
Welcoming everyone
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
Like the Moana, which was built in 1901, Duke's location ties it to rich Hawaiian history, much of it associated with legendary waterman and "Ambassador of Aloha" Duke Kahanamoku, a spiritual link that Duke's manager Anderson calls "essential."
Customers who sit in Duke's outside bar can gaze at not only Hawai'i's legendary surf and sun but at Diamond Head as well.
John Wilbur believes Kahanamoku's influence, along with a feeling of inclusiveness — inviting people who work the beach surrounding the hotel and "treating them right" — are all part of the formula.
"This is the center of the beach, where Outrigger (Canoe Club) used to be; it's the closest to all the breaks (surf spots). It's like Ground Zero of Waikiki," said Wilbur, a Hawai'i resident since 1974. Essentially, it's a second Outrigger Canoe Club — without the membership — where everyone feels like he belongs. "It's a place where local residents, kama'aina, people who work on the beach and tourists can all intermingle in a casual atmosphere."
Anderson estimated that the local clientele amounts to 30 percent of the restaurant's business.
After Sept. 11, management tried not to cut corners. "We bit the bullet and paid for our entertainment," Anderson said. "And we were ahead of the curve on the comeback because of that."
Fun but not rowdy
Another reason might have been because of the pricing. Casual dining rebounded more quickly after Sept. 11, said Patrick McCain, president of the Hawai'i Restaurant Association.
"Waikiki, when we looked at it, didn't have a mid-range restaurant," said Allaire. "It had some very low-priced restaurants and some very high-priced restaurants. But nobody was filling the middle market and doing it in a stylish way and inviting people to come back again and again."
That middle market means providing surroundings downscale enough to welcome everyone and to make people feel comfortable arriving from the beach, yet elegant enough "to kind of make you behave yourself," said Allaire. "You want a place that's fun but not too rowdy."
Duke's atmosphere is not just the picture of Kahanamoku by the entry, the koa wood or the salt air permeating the open-air setting. "It's not just the place that's magical," said Anderson. "It's the people we've filled it up with." People like cocktail waitress Joli Kenney who thrive on the energy Duke's radiates when performers like Buffett draw a crowd.
Despite the chaos of Buffett's concert, the smile never disappeared from Kenney's face as she and the other cocktail waitresses lightened their frequent inquisitions about whether a beer was bound for an underage drinker with "honey" and "sweetheart."
How can that be copied? "It's a very intangible thing," Anderson said of the varied reasons that amount to the company's success. "It's made up of values."
