EATZI'S STUMBLES

David Merrefield

The groundbreaking hybrid format, which incorporates elements of a restaurant and a supermarket into one package, has taken its first stumble.

The EatZi's Market & Bakery in Westbury, N.Y., was closed last month. EatZi's is a format that sprang from Dallas under the development of Brinker International, the operator of a number of restaurant concepts such as Chili's Bar & Grill, Cozymel's Coastal Mexican Grill and Maggiano's Little Italy. The EatZi's concept caught the eye of the supermarket industry from the day it opened in Dallas in January 1996.

It seemed as though just about everyone in the industry made a pilgrimage to Dallas to see the ultimate home-meal-replacement solution. What they saw was a store of about 8,000 square feet, bustling with an open-preparation area from which meals were prepared together with a bakery, and such fare as produce, cheese and florals. Grocery was offered too. The whole presentation was decidedly to the upscale side, and quite theatrical.

The Dallas store became such a destination for those in the supermarket business that signs were posted that offered guided tours of the facility, and forbade photography.

From Dallas the concept rolled to Houston in 1997, then in 1998 to Atlanta, New York City and Westbury, a Long Island suburb. The most recent opening was in Rockville, Md., early this year.

But the Westbury unit just didn't work out, and the New York City location may not be doing so well either. Brinker executives told SN the Westbury location failed because New York state law forbids the sale of wine in a food store, and that the category is highly profitable at other EatZi's locations. Moreover, the site was in a strip center across Old Country Road from a mammoth shopping mall. The concentration of automobile traffic there made it difficult for shoppers to access it quickly, and impossible to approach on foot. There's a news article about the store closure on Page 25.

Doubtless all those factors are relevant to the store's failure, but they all existed when the store opened almost exactly a year ago: New York laws about wine and liquor sales haven't changed in generations (and apply equally to the EatZi's in New York City), and motor traffic on Long Island has been horrendous for decades.

There's no way to tell if the city EatZi's will prove to be successful, but it's located in the basement of a vast department store, Macy's. Near EatZi's entrance is a large display of tourist knicknacks, perhaps suggesting from whence much of its business is coming. Tourists don't form the basis for much repeat business. The city store is also difficult to approach conveniently because of its subterranean location and the density of pedestrian traffic in Herald Square. Parking a car to pop in for a moment is out of the question. Nonetheless, the EatZi's format is one that generates genuine shopper excitement and is one -- like Boston Market -- that can teach supermarket retailers something about menu and presentation regardless of how its economics happen to work out.