Cheesecake Factory to open in Waikiki

By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer

For a company that doesn't advertise, advises customers they may have to wait up to an hour or three for service, and gets complaints about putting too much food on a plate, The Cheesecake Factory does well.

With room to seat almost as many people as the old Cinerama Theater, the nearly 600-seat Cheesecake Factory scheduled to open in early December at Waikiki's Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center also expects a lot of Hawai'i residents to visit a part of O'ahu that many kama'aina prefer to avoid.

But if there's any doubt that the 33-year-old debt-free company can succeed here, you don't hear it from analysts who study the business or from shopping center owners who compete fiercely for the restaurant as an anchor tenant.

"They have yet to open a bad restaurant," said Sharon Zackfia, a restaurant industry analyst for investment banking firm William Blair & Co. in Chicago.

According to analysts and consumers, there's a simple formula to what makes the Cheesecake Factory work: value and volume.

Customers find generous portions of quality food at good prices in a casual setting with decor that's more upscale than usual. Howard Gordon, company vice president for business development and marketing, said 70 percent of customers have leftovers wrapped up to take home.

The average restaurant serves 3,000 people a day, and brings in $1,000 per square foot in sales, or $11 million a year. The average Cheesecake Factory customer check is $16.

"They do enormous volume," said Malcolm M. Knapp, a restaurant industry consultant in New York who said the average Cheesecake Factory restaurant revenue is higher than any competitor's.

One of the keys to the restaurant's being able to draw so much business is a huge menu, which lists some 200 items, including 36 varieties of cheesecake.

Zackfia said such a wide selection would hurt cost efficiencies of most restaurants, but Cheesecake Factory uses it to draw a big enough mass of customers that makes the menu manageable.

In Hawai'i, the restaurant will be among the largest — bigger than the roughly 300-seat Palomino or Ryan's, the 420-seat Todai or 550-seat Sam Choy's Breakfast Lunch & Crab.

Waits at other Cheesecake Factory restaurants, none of which take reservations, can be as short as 10 minutes or as long as three hours.

Gordon said he doesn't know what to expect in Waikiki, given that the restaurant is bigger than others but will see more than normal traffic because of the tourist population.

Gordon also said the company expects a strong mix of residents visiting the restaurant. "A lot of locals want to come down here," he said. "A lot of the action is happening here."

Charlian Wright, Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center marketing director, said she expects the customer mix at the mall to change from 80 percent visitor and 20 percent kama'aina to 70 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

"A lot of the local residents told us, 'You get that (Cheesecake Factory) here, we'll be there,' " she said.

Wright said the center is offering two hours of free parking to Cheesecake Factory customers, with a rate of $1 per hour after that up to five hours.

Rick Egged, president of the Waikiki Improvement Association, said he believes Cheesecake Factory will become another reason for residents to visit Waikiki, along the lines of Duke's Restaurant and events such as Sunset on the Beach and Brunch on the Beach.

"One of the things we've been coping with is most residents feel there wasn't anything in Waikiki for them," he said. "They would take pride in saying it's been x-period 'since I was in Waikiki.' "

Still, some residents like Mike Fukunaga of Hawai'i Kai are hesitant. "Waikiki is a little outside my bubble," he said. "If we're going to go out to eat, Ala Moana is probably the limit."

Curtis Sakamoto, a Makiki resident who visited the San Francisco Cheesecake Factory in April, said if he had another reason to be in Waikiki he'd eat at the new restaurant. "I wouldn't go there just for that," he said. "Free parking is a plus, but it's got to be something else."

Frank and Gayle Neal, visitors from Chicago, cite own their experience when they recommend going into Waikiki for the Cheesecake Factory experience. "We have a lot of restaurants to choose from in Chicago," Gayle said. "If we go downtown, we go there."

Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8065.

Correction: For information about employment at The Cheesecake Factory, call 924-5190. A previous version of this story included a different number.