Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Harry Parker has a degree in engineering from NC State University, holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and gave up a major corporate sales and marketing job to get into the restaurant business. Six years after opening Gulf Shores Restaurant & Grill in Creve Coeur, he will open his second restaurant (215 Harvard, Edwardsville, Ill., 618-650-9019, gulfshoresrestaurantandgrill.com) this month. The marketing whiz shared some pointers, telling us about “life-or-death metrics” and advising us to stay away from “double-bogey” advertising.
You had a career before Gulf Shores.
I spent 28 years with DuPont in engineering, then as a vice president of marketing and sales. I became one of 19 vice presidents in a company that at the time employed more than 100,000 people. And yes, I gave up a high, six-figure salary to get into the restaurant business.
That’s either passion or lunacy.
It hit me one day when I was in Shanghai; I was tired of traveling, my father was terminally ill, and I wanted to take a leave of absence. My mom and dad were both great cooks, and we’d sit around and write recipes. When my father died, I told my wife I wanted to get into the restaurant business. After convincing her that I was serious, we agreed to roll the dice.
What was the next step you took?
I went to work at a restaurant and got totally immersed for six months, offering the operator free labor. That’s the only way to gauge if something’s for you. Go do it. I started as a dishwasher, fry cook, grill cook—all of it, six days a week. That experience was a passion tester. It was at a seafood place called Joey’s, in Minneapolis, a franchise, which is always a good place to learn. And I learned early on that in every business, there are three or four key metrics—I call them life-or-death metrics. In this business, they are food cost, labor cost, and customer satisfaction.
How did you end up here?
I ended up opening a Joey’s in O’Fallon, Missouri; I had a three-year deal with them, and then the plan was to do something on my own. Problem was, they couldn’t decide if they wanted to be a Long John Silver’s or a dinner house. Well, my daddy always said the worst thing you could be was a “tweener,” and eventually they went belly up. After two years of planning for my place, I hired a restaurant-location company that told me if I wanted to do a Cajun place and not have it in New Orleans, the St. Louis area would be ideal. I settled on Creve Coeur.
It’s Cajun and then some.
There’s live music in the dining room, an extensive menu—we even created an SEC feel. You’d have to visit three or four New Orleans restaurants to get what you see at Gulf Shores.
Does Gulf Shores cook from scratch?
Yes, we make all of our own sauces, dressings, and desserts, and we blend our own spices. The hot sauce [N’Awlins Sweet ’N Spicy] on our tables is my dad’s recipe. We hand-bread the onion rings, and we Cajun-batter our fries for extra crunch. We cut all our fish and cook it six different ways: Cajun sautéed, blackened, baked, grilled, fried in high-quality canola oil, or cooked in lemon garlic.
What did you learn?
How little many restaurant operators really know about the business. A great chef has a passion for creating things, but not nearly as many understand how much to charge for what they create or how to control the total dining experience. For example, there’s a reason I don’t sell lobster tails in my place. For what I’d have to sell them for—$35, $36—I’d be branded as an expensive restaurant, and that’s not what we are.
Your kitchen is amazingly small for the size of the menu and number of seats.
The 140 total seats—plus the 20 tables on the patio—can generate $2,500 per hour. It’s very efficient.
How do you maintain quality with such a broad menu? “Consistency” should be one of your restaurant metrics.
The menu’s big because we’re a seafood restaurant and a Cajun restaurant—with fresh fish and traditional Cajun dishes. We’re lucky we’re so busy and that everything on the menu sells. Nothing stays in its raw state around here for very long. My belief is that 75 percent of our success is based on proper prep: weighed-out portions, using seasoning packs, prepping only what’s needed.
Cajun food is rife with variances. Give me an example of something you do differently.
Our traditional red beans and rice were not selling, so I kept the seasoning but added tomatoes, changed up the rice to make it less sticky, and even took out the andouille sausage, because so many people steer away from pork. My mom’s reaction? “Baby, you ain’t in N’awlins no more,” which was basically an endorsement. We now hear, “It’s the best red beans and rice I’ve ever had.”
What’s one of the most popular items?
Gator is popular for two reasons: It’s a novelty, and we sell only the tenderloin—the best part of the gator. We strip out the gristle, then marinate it, batter it, and serve it as fried bites or in a gator Benedict on Sundays. We sell 300 pounds of gator a week.
Does it taste like chicken?
Chicken with a little bit of a fish taste.
What’s your favorite item?
Our ahi-grade tuna, blackened and seared rare. We serve it with a drizzle of Cajun ranch sauce.
I received the largest scallops I’ve ever been served at Gulf Shores—and they were reasonably priced.
We buy some of our fish on futures—tons of it—locking in the price for six months at a time. I do that with shrimp, catfish, scallops, gator—everything that’s subject to big price swings. We set our menu prices twice a year… A casual place like mine can’t afford to put the words “market price” on its menu. There are no surprises here. I’m excited because once we open in Edwardsville, Illinois, I’ll have even better buying power.
It’s one of the secrets to success, if you can pull it off.
Another one is paying in cash. I have several people on hand who can write checks, so every purveyor who makes a delivery gets paid right then—maintenance and repair work, too.
That’s unheard of. Most places pay C.O.D. only because they’re forced to.
Doing it our way, we get better product and better service.
I guess it’s hard for a fish and seafood place to buy local.
We do what we can. G & W Sausage makes our andouille for us, and McArthur’s Bakery makes a king cake every bit as good as one you get in New Orleans.
Live music and Cajun food seem to go hand in hand.
Especially at lunch. A $100 investment at lunch tripled our lunch business, from $1,500 to $3,500. All things being equal, wouldn’t you frequent the place that has live music?
Gulf Shores does not accept reservations, except for larger parties.
It’s all about table turns… Holding tables open for reservations costs restaurants a lot of money. We have live music six times a week—there’s no charge for that; we have 70 percent booth seating... We don’t cram people in; we run $3 drink specials every day; there’s no private room to supplement income. To be successful with our model, the tables have to remain occupied.
But you kind of meet the customer halfway.
When the wait exceeds an hour, we do “text waiting.” There’s no need to wait in the restaurant' we’ll text you when your table is nearly ready. You can also call an hour in advance and get put onto the waiting list. Both benefit the customer, and we don’t have to keep any tables open.
You mentioned a daily $3 drink specials. How can a restaurant afford to do that?
Obviously, we don’t make much money on those, but say you had two of those drinks... You’re going to look at that menu in a whole different light. You might justify ordering more or something more expensive or a dessert or two. Having inexpensive drinks helps keep the price point as casual as the food and atmosphere.
You’re pretty opinionated about Groupon-type offers.
It’s the worst thing a restaurant can do. They’re fine to get people to your place for the first time, but after that, the 50 percent off discount has to go away. It carries bad connotations.
How do you market Gulf Shores?
Word of mouth and doing “lives” [live endorsements] with three highly regarded voices of opinion: Charlie Brennan, Jamie Allman, and Martin Kilcoyne. Talk radio is not gonna die, and these guys all have a different cult following, appealing to different demographics. It’s not expensive if you do it strategically.
How about print advertising?
It’s fine unless it is “double-bogey,” by which I mean you pay to print your message and then you pay again if you offer a coupon. You don’t win with double bogeys.
And social media?
It’s the best thing that ever happened... I pay someone to monitor the top five sites, to create immediate conversations with people. It’s invaluable, it’s not expensive, and I’m kept 100 percent apprised.
You always seem to be at your restaurant.
When I am there, I’m visible. I run food, clean tables, open doors. How many great restaurants can you think of where the owner wasn’t a big part of its success? This is one of the advantages that independent owners have over chains. People get to say “…and the owner served us our food.” Customers appreciate that, the staff appreciates it.
Is it hard to motivate a restaurant staff these days?
You know what today’s kids are short on? Role models. They’ve seen so many bad restaurant owners. I tell them, “I can’t afford to have a bad day with you. You can’t afford to have a bad day with my customers.” They know there’s no way that Harry feels that good every day, but when they see me all happy, they put their troubles on the back burner, too.
People say you have a very good staff.
Because hopefully, I’m a good role model and because part of their training is how to treat each other, to be courteous and to respect each other… "Thank you. Excuse me. Can you help me, please?" When the guy in the back does something—anything—for you, it’s “thank you very much.” We don’t talk so much how to treat the customer; we talk about to treat each other… Then the customer part takes care of itself.
It’s common courtesy and common sense.
I want them all to become gatekeepers who won’t let me hire a bad egg, people who won’t let someone new and inferior destroy what they built. That’s the joy; that’s why I want to do it again.
You take your restaurant seriously.
This thing is mine, so if something is wrong, I have to fix it. I can’t leave. I believe the future of this country is in these mom-and-pop restaurants, so if I can help someone get there, I’m glad to do that for free. Helping people who don’t know enough about food and labor costs…people who just wanted to be in the restaurant business. If I ask them the food cost on a shrimp entrée and it’s not on the tip of their tongue, they’re in trouble.
Why is now the time to do a new place?
For a long time, I thought Gulf Shores’ brand identity wasn’t ingrained enough, but I feel it is now. Plus, I’m 60 now, I have a nine year old son and I coach him in basketball, baseball, football... It means the world to me. I just wanted to make sure I had the energy to do all that.
Why Edwardsville?
I contacted the same restaurant location company to advise me on the best site for my next restaurant, and they said Edwardsville. You know, the city of Creve Coeur embraced this restaurant from the start… According to them, we are now one of the 20 reasons to visit Creve Coeur. Edwardsville is already embracing us in much the same way.
Describe the interior.
Same menu, same pricing, same blackboards, same New Orleans-meets-SEC look, except we added some wood shutters inside and New Orleans-style lampposts outside.
Is the Edwardsville location bigger or smaller?
Creve Coeur is 3,000 square feet; Edwardsville is 3,800, with a patio that’s twice as big. And a bigger fish tank... [Smiling.]I invested $25,000 in a salt-water fish tank.
You have an interesting theory about customer service.
In corporate America, we had something we called “felt leadership”—touching it, feeling it. That’s what I try to do. And guests love to connect with the restaurant owner. I recently read that when people are relaxed, they tend to spend more money. [He smiles.] I love when I can get them to relax.
