KC & Pittsburgh

[Fat Guy]

Hi Lidia. I was wondering, how did you decide to open restaurants in, of all places, Kansas City and Pittsburgh? I don't think of either as a big-league restaurant city, and my intuition would have said you'd go for Chicago, San Francisco, or even Las Vegas -- these seem the more obvious choices.

How are the restaurants doing?

Have you faced any interesting challenges operating in these markets, which are so different from New York City?

[Lidia Bastianich]

Lidia's Kansas City and Lidia's Pittsburgh are doing very well in the "non big-league cities" as you call them; that's the precisely the point. There was an under serviced market of the product that we offered; hence, it made business sense.

Both cities are mid sized cities and are vibrant economically and culturall on the comeback, and those are some of the criteria that we used in selecting cities that would be ready for our products.

In both cities, we were greeted with excitement--financially and within the media.