I have a fascination with how once-successful businesses can undergo a change of ownership and rapidly turn into less successful businesses. We've talked here about how Sears and KMart stores are closing every which way and now I'm watching one of my favorite restaurant chains slowly disappearing on us.
We're talking about McCormick & Schmick's, once a vast network of places to go for really good seafood. It started in Portland, Oregon in the seventies and began slowly expanding. By 2009, Bill McCormick and Douglas Schmick had almost a hundred restaurants across the United States and Canada but in 2011 — not that long ago, really — things changed. The company's largest stockholder bought out shares, took the company private and in January of 2012, the chain was absorbed into the Landry's group which owns or controls several other chains including Morton's Steak Houses and Joe's Crab Shacks.
What has Landry's been doing with the McCormick & Schmick's restaurants? As near as I can tell, mostly closing them. I used to take my mother to a lovely one down on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It closed. Then I took her to a huge one in downtown Los Angeles, which was a great place to dine if you had tickets to a show at the Music Center. It closed.
Not that far away in El Segundo, there was a great McCormick & Schmick's where we often went. It's gone and when it shuttered, there were only two left in locations where I might ever go — the one a few blocks from where WonderCon is held in Anaheim; the other in San Diego, in the Omni Hotel right across the street from where they hold Comic-Con. So I still had places I could spend all the bonus dining points I'd accumulated.
But wait. On New Year's Day just past, employees at the San Diego one reported to work to find there was no more restaurant there. That McCormick & Schmick's has gone bye-bye on us. I just spoke to someone at the Omni who said it will not be replaced with another restaurant because, well, how could anyone possibly make money with a good restaurant right across the street from the San Diego Convention Center? (He didn't say that. That's my sarcasm. I would think in that spot, you could be empty 360 days a year and show an annual profit just from business during Comic-Con, especially if you're willing to serve people dressed as Harley Quinn.)
The person at the Omni told me that the little cafe they have there, which has been more of a bar with appetizers, is being expanded to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. I guess they know what they're doing but I'm not sure whoever's calling the shots for McCormick & Schmick's does. Other M&S's in this half of my state have also closed and the one in Anaheim seems to be the last one in all of Southern California. At least, I think it's still there. I haven't checked today.
I don't pretend to be an expert in the restaurant business — or for that matter, in my own. I know that success in dining establishments has a lot to do with the prices of real estate and leases and what else could go into a given location that might be more lucrative for the owner of the property. Dining habits do change over the years, too. But I also know that if you handed me a group of successful restaurants to manage and a few years later, all but one of them was gone, there's at least a strong possibility that I had done something wrong.