Rock it

Keeping a restaurant relevant is a challenge for many restaurateurs. With competition from new concepts, holding relevancy for two decades without change is almost impossible.

That's why the owners of Ceviche and Rococo Steak, Caledon Concepts, hired a new management team: to revive the 19-year-old business.

In January, the company named Lee Karlins president. He was previously director of operations for 2BHospsitality, the restaurant group behind St. Petersburg's Bella Brava and Stillwater's Tavern. Caledon then recruited Dave Madera, former general manager of Tampa's Mise en Place, as director of operations.

The duo spent the first four months devising a plan to stabilize and build Rococo Steak and revive the Ceviche brand, to make it relevant again. Caledon has made significant investments in each of its properties in 2016, with a nod toward hitting at least 10% in sales growth.

Results, early on, are good, with a surge in sales at Rococo and the three Ceviche locations spread from St. Petersburg to Orlando. Rococo has posted double-digit sales growth since January.

A traditional steakhouse in booming downtown St. Petersburg, Rococo was built in a refurbished 1920s funeral hall and features baroque art and fine wine. Caledon hired a new chef, Matt Rainey, to transform the menu, while Madera brought attention to the restaurant's impressive wine list, with more than 500 selections of different wines that date back to 1902.
Madera dropped prices on some vintages and made sure the staff was fully equipped with how to tell featured wine stories. The menus now tell those stories, too.

“It's not about points or score, but what's the story I can share with you that will get you to buy it,” Madera says. “Vintage wine is great to have, but it's better if someone is drinking it.”

The Ceviche revival is more robust. Caledon is touching everything that impacts the guest experience, according to Karlins, from the food to the cocktails, to the plates, napkins and silverware, to the room layout.

The biggest challenge: Delicately melding Ceviche's history with a modern Ceviche. “The bones are good,” Karlins says. “Restaurants need to evolve or they won't make it.”

Rainey, the new chef, is shrinking the 82 items on the menu to something more manageable and efficient. The favorites on the menu won't go away, but may be re-plated for a better display. “We're taking the quantity away,” Madera says, “but quality will be elevated.”

The reconstruction of the layouts varies in each Ceviche location. Changes include:

In Tampa, the company is removing the divider between the dining area and the stage and bar, to open up the restaurant.

In St. Petersburg, it started from scratch on a new, more efficient bar in the dining area. In May, Madera and Karlins reworked the St. Petersburg basement bar to become its own concept — Che Lounge, to drive traffic to the restaurant upstairs. They changed out the lights, floor and music and rebranded the bar as a speakeasy featuring cocktails, which are also emphasized in storytelling. The new concept has already surpassed the bar's previous sales.

In Orlando, Caledon moved the flamenco dancing entertainment into the dining room and gave one of its three floors back to the landlord. Caledon is also taking advantage of the location on busy Church Street, by bringing the restaurant's energy out to the street with slider doors and a big patio and the stage strategically placed to invite people in.

The goal is to finish the Tampa build-out by mid-August, St. Petersburg in September and Orlando in October. And a new Ceviche location could be coming in 2017.

All of the changes require a significant amount of training for employees, but the “staff is hungry for it,” Madera says. The company even shut down each location for four days, to finalize the build-outs and run extensive wine and cocktail training sessions. “It's just like loading a new program on the computer,” Madera says. “We have to shut it off and reboot it.”

— Traci McMillan Beach