Following Claus Schmitz and the saga of his restaurant empire is now officially a full-time job.
In a press release issued at 3 pm yesterday afternoon (obviously his PR flak had stopped watching the Bears/Seahawks game as well), it was announced that Claus (Mosiac Tapas St. Louis and Mosaic St. Louis Airport), brother to fellow restaurateurs Frank (BARcelona) and Ellen Schmitz (Mosaic Bistro Market), had sold his portion of his newest restaurant, Prime 1000, a steakhouse barely 2 months old. With slick design elements from SPACE, including the only dry-aging room in the city, St. Louis Magazine thought this contemporary take on the concept was significant enough to feature on the cover of last month's issue.
In the release, Schmitz also wished "Prime 1000's new team the best," and mentioned that he " now has plenty of time to focus on the new developments in the pipeline for Mosaic such as the new property in Des Peres scheduled to open in April 2011 and as well as a new project in Clayton and the Central West End."
What was that last part again? More restaurants on the way? That tease of a release left a lot of questions unanswered, and when contacted by telephone, Schmitz elaborated. "It's no secret we've been in negotiations with Centene for a while now, and those talks are continuing." And in the West End? "I'm talking to a mate about getting involved in an existing restaurant there, perhaps as early as spring, but those discussions are preliminary as well."
The decision to distance himself so soon from Prime has reopened the discussion of the wisdom of opening/owning/operating a steakhouse--especially downtown--in 2011. Having just logged his first December's sales (arguably the busiest month on a restaurant's calendar), there are those who were wondering if perhaps Schmitz saw some writing on the wall. "Not at all," he explains, "Prime opened to great success and great reviews. It's just that an interested investor appeared and I decided to take advantage of that opportunity. Quite frankly, my time is better spent building Mosaics than running other projects 50/50." (Back in Econ 101, that measurement was referred to as "opportunity cost.") Then Schmitz adds, "Plus, one of my intentions was to protect Mosaic's corner, and I have done that. I'm very happy with what we created at Prime."
Asked if Exec Chef Ben Lester and/or corporate manager Gregg Doyle would stay behind, Schmitz said, "The entire Mosaic group will give the investors all the help they need in maintaining what we created."
It's no secret that the local steakhouse niche is getting a bit crowded: The opening of Prime and the soon-to-open Shula's 347 puts the tally of downtown steakhouses at nine (math check: Al's, Carmine's, Fifteen, Jake's Steaks, Mike Shannon's, Ruth's Chris, SleeK).
Schmitz' decision seems vaguely parallel to when Gerard Craft recently surprised the restaurant cognoscenti by selling one of his hot properties (Taste by Niche, soon to reopen in the CWE) to one of his minions, Chef Adam Altnether, thereby allowing Craft to ultimately focus on maintaining and building the Niche brand. Craft is not finished opening restaurants and apparently neither is Schmitz.
On a side note, Relish's minions are spending this MLK Day looking for sales on athletic shoes...if just to keep up with the antics of guys like Craft and Schmitz.
