The ONE Group Hospitality Sees Big Opportunity for Benihana Express

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The imaginable of Benihana Express keeps growing, according to The ONE Group Hospitality CEO Manny Hilario.

The institution has spent the past fewer months gathering the instauration for the conception aft purchasing a Miami Benihana Express from an exiting franchisee. The edifice is producing much than $1 cardinal successful yearly revenue, person to $1.2 cardinal according to Hilario, from an 800- to 1,000-square-foot footprint. Food costs tally adjacent 20 percent and labour adjacent 25 percent, allowing the format to present premier margins supra 50 percent. Development costs are projected astatine astir $500 per quadrate foot.

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The economics make a antithetic maturation way from a accepted Benihana, wherever the teppanyaki acquisition requires considerably much abstraction and specialized labor. Express keeps recognizable paper items but packages them for convenience and off-premises occasions.

"Our positioning of the conception is that we tin bring the large craveable nutrient of the Benihana model, which we each get a batch of large feedback from customers connected peculiarly the fried atom and immoderate of the items that we person connected the menu," Hilario said during The ONE Group's second-quarter net call. "So it's a premium acquisition connected a to-go basis."

The ONE Group hasn't provided a imaginable U.S. portion number for Express, but Hilario described the accidental arsenic sizable. Its footprint opens a overmuch larger excavation of imaginable existent estate, and the lack of teppanyaki chefs simplifies staffing and training.

The institution has besides spent the months since acquiring the Miami edifice moving connected branding, prototypes, and store designs that tin beryllium presented to prospective franchisees. Interest has started coming in, Hilario said.

Benihana Express has a company-owned edifice nether operation successful Denver and a licensed determination successful the Florida Keys successful development, with openings expected by year-end. Franchisees are expected to wage a 6 percent royalty and lend different 2 percent toward selling nether aboriginal agreements.

"I deliberation that everything that we request from merchandise to plan to operational model, we've defined each that," Hilario said. "Now it's conscionable a substance of bringing successful the close franchisees and selling those franchisees to people."

The accepted Benihana concern gives The ONE Group a beardown basal from which to prosecute that expansion.