Friday?s Focuses on Fayetteville, Swanson Reconfigures Plant

T.G.I. Friday’s, America’s first casual dining chain, plans to open a restaurant in Fayetteville.

Darin Gardner, who owns VNE Inc., the Friday’s franchise group in Fort Smith, says he’s ready to start work on a restaurant for Fayetteville, but corporate headquarters in Dallas is holding up the deal. Apparently, there’s some debate on who would get the Fayetteville franchise.

“The whole corporation is kind of in limbo about who’s going to open that store up there,” says Gardner. “I’m not sure who the other franchise group is. If I were to start it, I would break ground within the next two months.”

“We are currently in negotiations with a development group to bring a T.G.I. Friday’s to Fayetteville,” says Charlie Foster, vice president of worldwide development for Friday’s. Foster declined to comment further about the Fayetteville situation.

Gardner has already found a location in Fayetteville — a 1.8-acre tract west of The Eye Center on Millsap Road. The property is listed for sale by Coldwell Banker Faucett Real Estate for $472,278.

If Friday’s doesn’t OK the restaurant for Gardner, he says he will open either a Dave & Buster’s or Humperdink’s Bar & Grill in Fayetteville. Both of those are casual-dining restaurant chains based in Dallas. The Dallas Humperdink’s boasts the tallest bar in the world.

The first Friday’s opened in 1965 in New York City. The chain now has more than 465 restaurants in more than 380 cities and 45 countries. The restaurants draw primarily from the 21 to 49 age bracket with a median income of $45,000 to $50,000.

Friday’s does $3.2 million in average sales per restaurant, the highest of any national restaurant chain.

Carlson Restaurants Worldwide Inc., the parent company of Friday’s, is a privately held company owned by Carlson Companies Inc., a world leader in the travel, hospitality, marketing/motivation and real estate industries.

Swanson plant adjusts: smaller chickens, bigger pieces

The Vlasic Foods International plant in Fayetteville (formerly a Campbell Soup Co. plant) has been reconfigured to process slightly smaller chickens and cut them in larger pieces. The company hopes this will help customers recognize the chicken parts in their Swanson TV dinners. (Swanson is a division of Vlasic.)

The problem, says Kevin Lowery, a spokesman for the company, is that Swanson, under the Campbell Soup umbrella, had been cutting chickens into 19 fairly unidentifiable pieces for use in the frozen dinners. The result was that customers couldn’t tell what they were eating.

After the spin-off of Vlasic last March by Campbell Soup, the folks from Vlasic went to the local supermarket, examined a package of chicken and discovered it had been cut into only 10 pieces.

“We then began a process to reconfigure the way we produce this product,” says Lowery. “We looked at ways to provide the customer with pieces of chicken they could recognize. This isn’t rocket science. The key is getting back to basics and getting back to where the business was.”

The reconfiguring took some adjustment at the Fayetteville plant but not much money, Lowery says.

Lowery says the Swanson TV dinner line had been largely ignored by the cyclopean Campbell Soup. Last fall, Campbell Soup announced the spin-off of Vlasic, which generated $1.4 billion in annual sales (one-fifth of Campbell Soup’s total).

“You would think a neglected business would decline incredibly,” says Lowery of TV dinners. “It actually hasn’t. It’s been relatively flat.”

Swanson invented TV dinners during the Eisenhower Administration. They were referred to as “TV dinners” because they were modern, not because they were made to be consumed in front of the television.

In a sort of time warp, and despite efforts by the industry to drop it, the label “TV dinner” has stuck in an era when being a couch potato is decidedly out of style. No matter what you call it, though, TV dinners are still big business. The frozen dinner line brings in $300 million annually for Swanson foods. Of that amount, frozen chicken dinners account for $75 million.

Before the spin-off, Vlasic was losing money. Vlasic had 9 percent of the $4.5 billion frozen prepared-foods category, running fourth to Nestle U.S.A. Inc., owner of Stouffer’s and Lean Cuisine brands, which has 26.4 percent; and ConAgra Inc., makers of Healthy Choice, Marie Calender’s and other brands, which has 19.8 percent; and H.J. Heinz Co., which had 9.3 percent of the market, according to Information Resources Inc., which tracks sales in supermarkets and other stores.

In addition to the different cuts of chicken, Swanson plans to offer a boneless chicken breast dinner by October. The company has also started producing a half white meat, half dark meat frozen chicken dinner. Previously, the dinners were either all white meat or all dark meat.

Lowery says Swanson spent $5 million in advertising last year. That amount will double in fiscal 1999 and triple the next year, he says.

Swanson frozen dinners are made at two Vlasic plants — in Fayetteville and in Omaha, Neb. Each plant produces about 1.5 million frozen dinners per week. About 900 people work in the Fayetteville plant.

By spinning off the companies rather than selling them, Campbell Soup could save between $250 million and $400 million in taxes.

Vlasic Foods International has about 9,000 employees worldwide. The company, which is headquartered in Cherry Hill, N.J., includes eight leading branded food businesses with operations in five countries, anchored by Swanson frozen foods and Vlasic pickles in North America and Swift meats and pates in Argentina.

Cafe Santa Fe signs lease for new restaurant

Tom Flores, president of CSF Franchise Group of Fayetteville, says he signed the lease Aug. 5 to open a new Cafe Santa Fe Mexican restaurant in Fayetteville’s Crossroads Village shopping center by Feb. 1.

Cafe Santa Fe will take up 4,000 SF of the 15,000-SF building that’s still under construction at Crossroads Village, at the intersection of Arkansas Highways 265 and 45. The building is expected to be finished by December. In May, Flores told the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal the Crossroads Village deal had fallen through.

Cafe Santa Fe currently has six restaurants: a corporate store in Springdale and one franchise each in Fayetteville, Harrison, Rogers, Eureka Springs and Joplin, Mo. Flores began selling franchises of the restaurant in 1997.

Flores says he plans to open five other restaurants by the time the new Fayetteville eatery opens in February. The others are in Hot Springs, Benton, Mountain Home, Fort Smith and Neosho, Mo. Flores says he is also looking at opening franchises in Russellville, Conway, Sherwood, Searcy and Nixa-Ozark, Mo. Flores says he plans to sell 12 franchises per year.