Chain Profile: Benihana
Moving into its 43rd year, Benihana introduces a new prototype with a more contemporary design and ambiance to attract a wider customer base, improve operational efficiency and reduce capital expenditures.
By Donna Boss, Contributing Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 2/1/2007 12:00:00 AM
In 1964, when Rocky Aoki opened the first Benihana restaurant near the theater district in New York City, he believed the chefs' showmanship - preparing meals at individual guests' tables - would be a key attraction. A Japanese farmhouse interior surrounded tables with adjoining steel grills for chefs to cook beef, chicken, shrimp and vegetables teppanyaki-style. (Teppan means "steel grill" and yaki means "broiled.") At the time, this style of Japanese cooking was rare, if not unique, in the United States.
At first, only one or two customers a day came into the restaurant. Aoki family members moonlighted at other restaurants to pay the bills. Six months after the restaurant’s opening, a New York restaurant critic lauded the new establishment. Soon after, Aoki is said to have had to turn customers away. In 1983, the initial public stock offering took place followed by further growth and acquisitions. Today, the Benihana chain is the largest operator of teppanyaki-style restaurants in the country with 59 company units, seven Haru Sushi restaurants and 13 Ra Sushi restaurants. In addition, 17 franchised Benihana teppanyaki restaurants operate in the United States and Latin America.
 In the Spirit Dining Room as well as in the Energy Dining Room, chefs turn on hoods when they cook at the tables and turn them off when they are finished. Calibration of hoods is crucial to keep air conditioning and other energy usage costs as low as possible. |
The owners of Benihana credit this concept that makes eating part of the entertainment with “paving the way in America for the popularity of other Japanese cooking styles and food products,” including sushi. The concept itself originated after World War II in Japan. Yunosuke Aoki, a samurai descendant and popular Japanese entertainer, and his wife Katsu opened a small coffee shop in Tokyo named Benihana, which means “red flower” in Japanese. Red safflowers were a common sight in the neighborhood streets surrounding the coffee shop.
In 2006, Benihana introduced a new prototype with a more contemporary design. The first converted restaurant opened in Short Hills, N.J., in February and the first with a new look and ambiance built from the ground up opened in Miramar, Fla., in June. “We were after the ‘wow’ factor that the first Benihana brought to America,” says Joel Schwartz, president and CEO of Benihana Inc. “The excitement we’re creating will keep us at the cutting edge of contemporary dining and entertainment, which is where we’ve been since Benihana introduced the teppanyaki concept to Americans in 1964.”
Called “The Next Benihana” by corporate executives, the prototype brings the company to its original roots of chikara, meaning power and energy, according to Schwartz, and is designed to appeal to the senses — taste, sight, sound, aroma, touch and energy — of families and couples. The prototype also allows more cost-effective build-out and a more profitable operational system.
“Together, we enhanced the appeal of the building and experience to the guest, significantly reduced the capital investment by 30 percent and changed the operational processes,” says Mark Godward, president, Strategic Restaurant Engineering, a fully owned subsidiary of WD Partners, an architectural design firm.
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Ownership: Benihana Inc.Over the years, Godward explains, Benihana evolved from being a Japanese- style hibachi steakhouse to include a substantial, yet underused bar and a combination sushi and appetizer bar in the front of the house. “Our aim was to expand the use of the bar and to encourage guests to take advantage of the sushi and appetizer menus in addition to the teppanyaki offerings,” Godward says. “In the older restaurants, these choices are available but they aren’t obvious or as appealing. The owners want to encourage guests to come to Benihana for special occasions and also to come more frequently to this facility for a casual dining experience that offers several menus.”
In addition to keeping the theater component of the Benihana experience, the design objectives also included creating a variety of dining options within distinct zones, increasing the perception of privacy between tables, creating more focus on the chefs’ performance and memorable focal areas within the restaurant.
The operational objectives included designing the restaurants so they could be more easily retrofit into existing units, as well as more flexible for various real estate locations. The objectives also intended to reduce the building size in order to lower capital investment and site costs, rightsize the kitchen for sales capacity, redesign the kitchen to improve functionality, efficiency and labor usage, and ensure that facility and work processes are as efficient as possible in the front and back of the house.
On the prototype restaurant’s exterior, glass windows frame chefs preparing teppanyaki, giving passersby a glimpse of the interior action. Inside, the oversized entrance also offers guests views of activity through bamboo “walls” and a banded window that runs the length of the curved exterior wall on the centralized bar/sushi bar. A large Kanji character sculpture hanging from the bar’s ceiling is also partially visible from the entrance. A large, red Benihana crest anchors a curved stone wall that provides a backdrop for the hostess stand.
In the circular bar area, a Japanese haiku poem is mounted on the interior of the stone wall that is visible from the entrance and dining rooms. On the far side of the room, in the sushi-appetizer bar area, graphic patterns move across a huge red mural. Also in the sushi-appetizer bar area, a translucent backdrop calls attention to chefs as they prepare menu items. “Materials used for the seating area create a very expensive look, but are very cost-effective,” Godward says.
Benihana’s menu and service variety requires substantial coordination of items prepared at the bar, the sushi-appetizer bar and at the tables, which necessitates raw ingredient assembly in the back of the house. “Unlike in many restaurants, at Benihana, everything is not coordinated in a single kitchen, which presented a great challenge for us,” Godward says. In the prototype, sushi and appetizer prep is now fully visible to customers.
 A circular table in the sushi area promotes communal and large party dining. A translucent backdrop calls attention to chefs as they prepare menu items for the sushi and appetizer menus. |
“Every menu item that isn’t cooked at the tables is prepared in the sushi-appetizer area so when servers pick up menu items they come to one central place,” Godward says. “The bar is right there, also, so servers can pick up drinks easily, as well.”
In addition to a dedicated sushi prep area where raw fish is cut and assembled, this station also includes a fryer, a flat grill and two burners, all of which are covered by an exhaust hood. “In the prototype, the grill was added to the equipment package and we ergonomically redesigned the workstations,” Godward explains.
Changes from the existing Benihana restaurants also can be found in the prototype’s two dining areas where teppanyaki is prepared. One is inspired by “energy,” which has a warm color palette, and the other is inspired by “spirit,” which has a cool color palette. Each dining room’s graphics relate to their names and are either inspired by nature or use appropriate Kanji characters and pictographs. Theatrical backdrops frame the chefs as they prepare teppanyaki. Lighting contributes yet more drama.
In the dining areas, the steel grills are made with a chrome finish because they must be resilient to continuous cleaning. “After each use, chefs clean the grills so they are spotless and ready to use for the next group of customers,” Godward says.
 Photos courtesy of WD Partners/SRE |
Hoods covering the grills are open on all sides because they are situated over the tables and not against a back wall. “This isn’t technically trivial,” Godward says. “Hoods must have a strong draw to contain vapors and smoke. However, if the hood is too strong, it will be too noisy, create a draft and increase the temperature of the surrounding area. A lot of balance is needed to obtain the appropriate draw and makeup air.” Unlike in other restaurants, he explains, “the hoods at Benihana aren’t on all the time in order to control the amount of air conditioning needed and overall energy use in the building. When cooks approach the individual tables, they turn the hood on and turn it off when they leave. All 16 to 18 hoods are on and off at different times, and only 12 out of a total of 16 hoods can be on at once.”
In order for teppanyaki chefs to cook items quickly and efficiently, in the back of the house, kitchen staff prepare and assemble all of the ingredients chefs need at the tables. Prototype kitchens, including storage areas, are now 2,000-square-feet of the facility’s total 7,500-square-feet, or 900-squarefeet smaller than traditional kitchens. The kitchen now comprises about 25 percent of the total space compared to 40 percent in traditional operations.
Walk-in coolers and a small freezer hold ingredients until they are needed for preparation. Staff prepare soups and rice on a four-burner range with a convection oven beneath for browning ingredients such as sesame seeds. The staff also use a rice cooker and worktables. “In future revisions, we will add more worktable surface and will move the burner and rice cooker so they aren’t quite so prominent in a traffic area,” Godward says.
 A refrigerated rail holds ingredients that staff place on mobile carts prepared for chefs making teppanyaki at the dining room tables. |
A specific part of the kitchen is equipped with reach-in and undercounter refrigerators and an assembly line with containers holding cold ingredients. Staff place the ingredients on mobile carts, which chefs take out to the tables for teppanyaki preparation. Staff vs. chef preparation of ingredients saves labor expenditures and also decreases guests’ waiting times after they place their orders.
Relocating this assembly area to a more centralized location also contributes to overall operational efficiency because it is easily accessible by staff and chefs. “In the old model, this area was buried in a corner,” Godward says. “We brought it forward and repositioned the dishroom.”
 In the back kitchen, staff use rice cookers and a range to prepare items that aren’t prepared in the sushi-appetizer area out front. |
Dishwashing includes a dirty area, a rinse section with a three-compartment sink, a conveyor dishwashing machine and a clean table. One hand sink is dedicated to knife washing. “Knives must be washed constantly,” Godward says. “We installed a sink on the left so it is accessible by chefs, who wash their own knives, from the outside.”
Though Godward says there is nothing “special” about the dishroom per se, he emphasizes the need for heavy-duty dishwashing equipment to handle the enormous volume of dishes needed at Benihana restaurants. One table may use up to 40 plates.
Other efficiencies include a banking area where servers bring checks and cash out themselves rather than waiting for a central cashier.
Together, the changes in the prototype will shorten customers’ dining experience from a typical 90 minutes to 70 or 80 minutes. The industry average at a casual-dining restaurant, Godward says, is 50 minutes.
Updating the Benihana brand requires incorporating contemporary design to attract a wider demographic of guests and improving operational efficiencies in order to produce a healthy bottom line. Benihana seems to be approaching the future with a sense of balance and sensitivity to the need for change without losing its rich tradition.
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