canadianintexas

Extremely successful in the USA? I don't know - if 50% of the Earls locations in Canada failed - would you consider it to be extremely successful? Dallas tanked, a second Phoenix location tanked. Funny how those two were the two most recent openings as well, but failed to catch on. The location in Denver may be busy and that would be the key. The location. IF Earls does it's homework properly and just doesn't "half-ass" it, eg: picking lousy locations, mediocre exteriors, no walk-by traffic, poor people selection - then it works. As far as expansion - those plans have been plans for a looooooooong time. They were planning locations in Frisco, TX; one in the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas; Florida; and the second one in Denver has been so caught up in red tape for so long that I don't know if it will ever get done. They wanted to have one right downtown, but the landlord they were going to rent the space from didn't think it was likely to be profitable enough for the space. I liked Earls and still know a lot of people working for them, but they need to do their homework and not rush things without the necessary "ingredients" in place. It's like baking a cake in a bathtub. You can get lucky and maybe make it work - but the odds are a lot better if you do it the right way.

I am not surprised at all. The guy I kew that used to be the head chef there quit it about 5 months ago because it was too slow - no business. Just another half-assed attempt by Earls again as was their USA expansion efforts. Haven't heard anything about OPM. Joey Toamto's is going into an old Cucina! Cucina! location in Seattle. Has an Earls opened up in WEM yet? I had heard that one was going to be opening there.

.... and what could be more Canadian than Saskatoon berries?

I don't know about what a Canadian Cusine would be typified as, but there is a small Canadian contingent down here in Dallas. The first thing that comes to mind when "Canadian Cuisine" is mentioned is poutine. I know it isn't as sexy as Chicago deep dish pizza or Southern BBQ or Tex/Mex cuisine, but it is usually the first thing that pops up here anyway. There is a place down here that serves cheese fries called Snuffer's, but they have bacon & jalapenos on top with the chees instead of gravy. In highschool in Prince George BC, fries w/ gravy was probably the most popular item in the cafeteria. I then moved out to Edmonton where there is a big Ukranian influence. Perogies are something I consider a Canadian Cusine; or at least Northen Albertan. I'm sure there is a much bigger perogy following in the Ukraine or Russia, but when diner type restaurants of the area have perogies on the menu - I consider that a regional meal. The same way Chicken Fried Steak is a Texas type of reginal cusine. They even have a rating system. One pick-up truck in the parking lot = not very good CFS. Three pick-up trucks = pretty good CFS. Five + pick-up trucks = very good CFS; stop here to eat.

Yes I did work at the Dallas location. Execution was not to the Canadian standards at all. Pretty much the red-headed stepchild syndrome with out of site/out of mind mixed in. In Texas, without any significant advertising, whether it was word of mouth or otherwise, the name "earls" made people think of BBQ joints. Huge in Texas, and the south - but generally not the type of restaurant an Earls restaurant in Canada would be. As far as I know and from what we were told, the second Scottsdale location is closed as well. The Pima Road spot is still there, and absorbed some of the staff of the other store. The location in West Edmonton Mall is supposed to be opening around November or December barring any unexpected delays. I have been to a couple of the new Joey's. The downtown Edmonton location on Jasper Ave was dramatically improved from how it used to look. The menu and decor are great. If I had the choice, I would rather eat there than at Earls. I was offered the chance to work at the new Joey's location(s) in the Pacific Northwest. I had seriously considered it, but I have a fiancee down here and I'd prefer to stay in Big D. Also, I'd like to see how it runs first before possibly going through the same thing that happened here. I know one of the GM's that is in charge of the expansion/changeover. I have no doubts about his ability to do his job - it's just that the things I saw down here mean that I doubt the higher-ups dedication to the job that could submarine all their hard work. The Keg is doing very well down here although, it is perceived as a midlevel steakhouse, I guess the same way it is up in Canada. It opened it's first DFW location maybe a year after Earls opened and has expanded with more success as well. Another Canadian chain doing very well here in the USA is Boston Pizza. They opened about the same time we did and have expanded to about 20 locations already throughout the USA, with expectations to double that this year. They even have one in Mexico. Now they just need to bring Tim Horton's further south and I'd be in heaven.

I think the reason Earls is opening all these new themes is because they've exhausted the "earls" concept. Maybe not the concept, but the name. They seem to have gotten too cocky for their own good. Their concepts and way of doing things are fundamentally sound, but they don't follow them as a whole as well as they used to. There are too many chiefs and egos floating around. Their USA expansion so far has been a virtual flop. They have tried stores in Texas and Arizona, and a long time ago in San Francisco. I can only speak from experience with the Texas location, but it was half-assed to say the least. The location, to start off with, was across the street from a hospital, and beside a light-rail transit station in a stretch mall type of setting with 50% of the surrounding businesses vacant or out of business. Needless to say it wasn't a typical location that you'd find an Earls up in Canada. The exterior of the building was horrendous. It was frequently said to us that it looked like a BBQ restaurant or a Denny's from the outside. There was a striped blue & off white awning along the front of the building & a 3 ft tall red/orange neon sign that read "EARLS RESTAURANT" in block letters exactly the way it looks as I just typed it. It wasn't in the typical "earls" font or signage. If you were to pick up the entire building and drop it in a similar location somewhere in say Edmonton, Calgary, or Vancouver - where the earls name is extremely well known - people driving by would probably not associate it with being an "earls" of the chain they are familiar with. They would in all likelihood assume it was a different type of restaurant with the same name and wonder how long it would take for a copyright lawsuit of the name to be brought against it. The inside - they blew around $750,000 on renovations (it wasn't built from the ground up like a lot of other Earls). Apparently this was how all the earls were going to be made into through updating of the older restaurants. It was very nice inside but the interior did not match the exterior. People that did stop and come in expected a "Denny's" when they pulled up, but saw a damn near Hy's Steakhouse on the inside. It wasn't quite that swanky, but close. Most of the business was done during the day in the restaurant and in the bar at night. Nighttime dinner business was non-existent. I went down there with a group of ten others from other Earls throughout Alberta and BC. We had to go out and staff a place that no one knew about. The work standards of a lot of the people were extremely lax and a sense of entitlement among the people recruited was also very high. In Texas, a lot of upscale/casual restaurants have a hostess seat you, a server take your drink & food order, a runner to run the food to the table, buspeople (usually a mexican) to fill your water/iced tea and a setter to clear the table. The server checks to see how everything is and then at the end drops off your check. Not a whole lot of interaction or work being done. We expected our servers to do all of these steps themselves and not treat the bussers as second class citizens. Consistency was also a huge problem. Manual updates went unknown for months at a time. Certain people with their egos inflicted their desires and ways of doing things on the staff and never followed up with the other staff to let them know that thye had changed something. Punctuality and attendance were brutal, but was let off with several dozen warnings before the person usually just quit. The GM was replaced barely a year into the business and replaced with the day manager who had zero experience in the position. GM turnover was huge. Four GM's in 5 years. No continuity could be achieved. Night kitchen sous-chefs were either drunk/hungover/or just plain incapable. Too much fod discounting was done in attempts to draw in customers. $5 Fridays was a popular one. The idea was to discount $5 off all steaks on Fridays in an attempt to get customers to order our steaks and see that they were the "best in Dallas". Anyone who has been to Dallas knows steakhouses are almost as prevalent as Starbuck's in Seattle. There are high end steakhouses with their own helicopter landing pads that make steak their business with professional 15 year broiler cooks making their steaks - not some 20-something punk who has only been cooking steaks for maybe 3 years. Even if we had a professional cooking just steaks, our meat was brutal as well. The best steakhouses in Dallas get their meat from Chicago, Iowa or Kansas City. Ours came from Canada by way of Scottsdale. They were shiped to us for a while by truck from Arizona, with no discernable ice/dry ice left in the shipping contianer they arrived in. One time the truck broke down and had to wait for a new truck to pick up their delivery and carry on with the trip. Somehow I doubt they had refrigeration that whole time.... Advertising was minimal at best. Not a good way to go about telling a new city about your restaurant. An example of a billboard was a huge picture of an earls fork with all but one of the tines bent back, so that it looked like a hand with one finger pointing towards something. The billboard read "This way to earls..." That was it. The fork wasn't even pointing in the right direction of the restaurant. There was a huge group of regulars that loved the place, but if it hadn't ben for all the office buidings nearby supplying lunch business, the place would have gone under after 1 year. It was like having a location in downtown, but no walk-in or drive-past customers. After 2pm except for Friday and Saturday, business was a trickle most nights. Brunch was tried 3 different times, failing each time for the same reasons everytime, but each GM thought they had the magic to make a brunch work. I heard the 2nd Phoenix location had a lot of the same problems. Currently there are only 2 Earls left in the USA. One in Scottsdale, AZ; and one in Denver, CO. Joey Tomatoes is going to be next to try USA expansion. They are going to be taking over six Cucina! Cucina! locations in the Seattle area and converting them to the new Joey's Mediterranean Grill concept. Guess they couldn't make Earls work, so they're going to try Joey's now. I hear that they are going to be opening an Earls in West Edmonton Mall in the Bourbon Street section this year, but that could get shelved the way things are going with the Earls concept. Hopefully OPM and Publik don't inherit the same faults that Earls has developed. Am I bitter? Yup.

Basically as far as I know it's: “a pub that serves high quality food”. The prices, though moderate for the type of dishes being served, are higher than what you might expect for a typical pub. Moreover, “you probably order at the bar,” though the plates will be brought to your table, and like a pub, should you choose not to eat, you may drink without ordering food. I have seen a few drafts of the menu, but not the final (I keep asking him to send it to me). This seems to be a logical definition.

I'm not sure of where OPM will be, but I know the head chef of Publik and they have opened in the old Joey Tomato's location at Whitemud Crossing, by the Crossroads Earls location.