Rio Bravo Sells Building to Colton?s

On May 17, Hand Cut Steaks Inc. purchased the 7,000-SF building at 642 Milsap Road in Fayetteville that housed a Rio Bravo Fresh Mex restaurant until it closed on that same day.

Bobby Fain, president of Colton’s Restaurant Group, which is based in Little Rock, said the building will be renovated and reopened on about July 15 as the 13th Colton’s Steak House.

Hand Cut Steaks, a subsidiary of Colton’s Restaurant Group, owns Colton’s Steak Houses in Jonesboro, Harrison, Russellville, Benton, Rogers and Springfield, Mo. Ten of the 13 Colton’s locations are in Arkansas. Besides Springfield, the other two locations outside Arkansas are Poplar Bluff, Mo., and Olive Branch, Miss.

Fain declined to divulge the purchase price for the building, which was constructed in 1997 to serve as a Rio Bravo Cantina restaurant. The original owners soon sold the restaurant to Applebee’s International Inc., which later sold the Rio Bravo chain to Chevy’s Inc. of California.

“We really prefer not to own the real estate,” Fain said, “but there was a lease on that building … and it was a tough, tough lease.”

So the company purchased the building instead.

Fain said it shouldn’t be difficult to convert the Tex-Mex restaurant building into a steakhouse. He said the building is in good shape and has “adaptable” kitchen space.

Other partners in the Fayetteville restaurant include Pat Boyd, Dennis Thompson and Stan Cooper. Boyd is vice president of real estate for Colton’s. Cooper is vice president of operations.

John McMillan, general manager of the Rogers Colton’s, will serve as area manager over the company’s restaurants in Rogers, Fayetteville, Harrison and Springfield.

Greg Taylor, who had been manager of the Rio Bravo, said Chevy’s offered the staff jobs at other locations, but he had hired the staff instead to work at a restaurant he plans to open. Taylor said he couldn’t divulge more information about his new venture at the time.

Rio Bravo Cantina opened like gangbusters in October 1997, breaking all the records in Fayetteville for monthly food sales with $361,767.

But since then, things slowly had been sliding south for the Fayetteville franchise. In 2001, monthly sales averaged $97,657, a 73 percent drop from that first month.

Chevy’s brought Taylor in last year from Little Rock, and the sales numbers improved near the end of 2001. But the sales figures were down again early this year. After mailing out 40,000 two-for-one meal coupons in early 2002, Fayetteville’s Rio Bravo still was struggling.