Say Good-Bye to Metro Diner

[TheCat]

The Tampa investors who entered into a partnership with the founders of Metro Diner in mid-2014 will completely control the brand by the end of the year.

ConSul Hospitality Group, comprised of former Outback Steakhouse and Carraba's Italian Grill executives, formed a partnership with Metro Diner owners Mark Davoli, John Davoli Jr. and John Davoli Sr.

"We will exercise our rights to go ahead and complete the acquisition of the intellectual property by the end of the year," said Hugh Connerty, a partner in ConSul.

That doesn't meant that the Davolis will completely wash their hands of the restaurant — in fact, far from it, though Mark Davoli may be spending a lot less time in Jacksonville.

The Davolis will remain partners in the first 15 Metro Diners, Mark Davoli said, and he's considering taking his wife and children on the road with him while he oversees the opening of new restaurants.

ConSul has already identified partners to open locations throughout Florida — in Tampa, Palm Coast, Altamonte Springs, The Villages — as well as in Savannah, Georgia; the Carolinas; the Philadelphia/New Jersey Corridor; and Indianapolis.

Mark Davoli and his dad, John Sr., bought the original Metro Diner — the tiny location on Hendricks Avenue — shortly after Thanksgiving Day in 2000. John Jr. joined them a few years later.

"It's pretty incredible," Mark Davoli said. "I know it's all cliches, but it's just all about hard work and anything you want, you can go get. One thing we always talk about is doing the right thing, whether it's for a guest, an employee, a vendor, and good things happen."
ConSul will finish the year with nine Metro Diner locations and build 11 in 2016. The group sees incredible growth potential for the brand, Connerty said, driven by Davoli's creative dishes and its gut-busting portion sizes.

"We're very excited about testing the waters with it," Connerty said, "and seeing it travel similar to the way we saw outback travel back in the 90s."

http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/morning-edition/2015/11/big-plans-in-the-works-as-former-outback-execs.html?s=print



The take away from this article is the disorienting thread title not that the investors are going into full takeover mode. 

[Cheshire Cat]

Ugh!

[BridgeTroll]

Sounds like the American Dream... work hard... build a business... and sell it for a huge profit.  Congrats to the Davoli's!

[BridgeTroll]

UGH is right.  It's a goddamn RESTAURANT CHAIN not a fucking "brand" .  And a pretty piss-poor restaurant chain at that.

Rofl... do you RAGE at everything Rachel?

[jaxjaguar]

Pretty sure Rachel has some sort of anger fetish / gets pleasure out of "thinking differently" than everyone else in every subject. I also believe noone is a robot from the 60's who's tape is stuck on an infinitely repeating poorly translated track.

[Tacachale]

Pretty sure Rachel has some sort of anger issue / gets pleasure out of "thinking differently" than everyone else in every subject. I also believe noone is a robot from the 60's who's tape is stuck on an infinitely repeating poorly translated track.

Rachel's a smart person who has adopted the communication style of my grandfather talking about Benghazi on Facebook, presumably as some kind of avant-garde creative writing experiment.

I'm pretty sure you're right about Noone.

[funwithteeth]

UGH is right.  It's a goddamn RESTAURANT CHAIN not a fucking "brand" .  And a pretty piss-poor restaurant chain at that.

Referring to things as "brands" is corporate jargon and perfectly applicable to a chain restaurant.

Rachel's a smart person who has adopted the communication style of my grandfather talking about Benghazi on Facebook, presumably as some kind of avant-garde creative writing experiment.

The problem with his preferred method of Internet discourse is 1) when he makes a good point, his disagreeable tone turns off more people than it turns on*, and 2) defaulting to a contrarian stance occasionally leads to appearing foolish, as in the above example. Applebee's, Chili's, Panera, etc. are both chains and brands, for instance.

* Spare me the sex jokes!

[Adam White]

If you hate the idea of brands, I'd love to see the reaction to Lovemarks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovemark

[funwithteeth]

I just vomited.

[Adam White]

I just vomited.

That was my reaction when that lovely concept was introduced to me a few years back by my wife (she's in marketing).

[iMarvin]

Another local product lost. Sigh.

[I-10east]

"Outback Diner, Where the General Public Eat!"

[Cheshire Cat]

Wow fellas, Rachel energetically sharing her opinion is an anger issue?   Rachel, do you have resting Bitch Face as well?    It's pretty clear what has Rachel upset.  In one way those who began the Metro Diner created a winning restaurant because of what they served and how they took the community's needs and wants into consideration.  They have the right to sell to whomever they choose.  The flip side of that coin is the reality that the local charm and sense of community created around a well loved eating establishment will likely be lost to the corporate mindset of a large business entity.  So we can be happy for those who sold the restaurant and still say "ugh" in response to a local favorite now becoming another asset of a large corporation. 

[thelakelander]

Congrats to the Davoli family. Sounds exciting for them.

[Noone]

I also believe noone is a robot from the 60's who's tape is stuck on an infinitely repeating poorly translated track.

+1
Stay Positive.
Say Good-Bye to Public Access to our River Downtown. DIA just put on the agenda for the 11/12/15 Jacksonville Waterways Commission meeting.