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Copyright 2001 Lebhar-Friedman, Inc. Like hot jazz and cool blues, FiRE + iCE is built around the idea of improvisation. And like a jazz set or a blues jam, the four-unit casual-dining concept depends upon a spontaneous blend of disparate elements to create a free-form, harmonious happening." Guests choose from a wide variety of poultry, fish and red meats, and then select a sauce from a station boasting a rotating selection of 48 flavors ranging from Caribbean Jerk to Red Thai Curry. Servers, in addition to waiting tables, act as tour guides in the market. Bright, one-word signs hanging in the market area and at the sauce station encourage guests to combine, create, flavor, imagine, indulge, invent, season and savor. "It's about exercising the freedom to design your own meal," says Mark Clark, general manager of the original FiRE + iCE, located a few steps off Harvard Square. "You can create a Mexican dish one visit and have Japanese cuisine the next." Diners can revisit the market to refill their fiesta-ware bowls as often as they like for a flat fee of $9.95 at lunch and $15.95 at dinner. Some more expensive, center-of-the-plate items, such as scallops, shrimp and shark, are available only during the dinner daypart, which begins at 4 p.m. According to Clark, the average diner makes between two and three trips to the market in the course of a visit. The next stop is the large, central grill, where diners watch their meal being prepared as the cooks "flip food, bang their spatulas and lead sing-alongs," Clark says. He adds that on special occasions, such as birthdays, bachelor parties and corporate celebrations, diners are permitted to step behind the grill and prepare their own food. "It's like taking every single diner into the kitchen," Miller explains. "FiRE + iCE is all about truth in eating." Miller, a former partner in Steve's Ice Cream and a founding investor in Bertucci's Brick Oven Pizzeria, notes that, like those earlier foodservice ventures, the FiRE + iCE concept capitalizes on a key piece of kitchen equipment. He adds that it is a business model designed to "create an experience by combining the front-end appeal built around the equipment used in the preparation of the product with a back-end appeal derived from the quality of the product. "If Steve's had had the ice-cream machine in the back, instead of in the window, it would have been just another ice-cream shop," Miller explains. "With Bertucci's, we took out the ice-cream maker and put in a brick oven. Here it's the grill." According to Miller, at FiRE + iCE the idea is to get people engaged in the experience. "The key word is 'authentic,' " Miller says. "What creates an authentic experience is what connects you to other people. It's the human interaction, the social event. Fire+Ice is a party that works." While the fires of the communal grill may be the chain's focal point, the signature iced drinks and infusions available at the FiRE + iCE bar play an important role in keeping the atmosphere "a little edgy" and the climate "boisterous," Clark says. He adds that on weekends, when the wait for a table averages between one and two hours, the bar area becomes "a cocktail party" complete with complimentary appetizers. Beverage sales also make a significant impact on FiRE + iCE sales, contributing 22.5 percent of the average $22-per-person dinner check, according to Paul Ciulla, the chain's chief operating officer. Food costs at the chain average 30 percent, according to Eric Losey, assistant general manager of the Cambridge FiRE + iCE. Losey, formerly the executive chef at Boston's Jacob Wirth restaurant, recently joined FiRE + iCE as the chain's "food guy." "What gives us an edge is we don't have a menu, so I can manage the mix as the market dictates," Losey says. "Since we are an all-you-can-eat concept, we have to get quality products that look good on our market. We try to target seafood and local produce." At the first three FiRE + iCE locations, in Harvard Square, the Back Bay section of Boston and the Providence Place Mall in Providence, R.I., unit volumes average $3.8 million, according to Ciulla. Ciulla says FiRE + iCE currently has "double-digit sales comps in all of our restaurants." Each of the four FiRE + iCE locations has unique architectural and design features. The Boston unit, at 10,000 square feet, is on two floors, with the bar located on the first level and the market and grill on the second. The original FiRE + iCE is located in a 6,500-square-foot space below street level and has the subterranean feel of an underground nightclub. The 9,000-square-foot unit in Providence reflects its location in a busy, new shopping mall. Jeff Rosen, vice president of systems for FiRE + iCE, says the chain's prototype calls for a space of about 7,000 square feet but notes "local demographics will dictate the environment." Miller adds FiRE + iCE "will never have a cookie-cutter approach" to design and architecture. "We are always experimenting with the model, and we are always wrestling with the experience," he says. Although the audience for FiRE + iCE to date largely has been composed of "young people who just want fun, who want to be part of the scene," according to Miller, neither he nor any of the other company executives were willing to identify a target demographic. Keith Brown, the area director for the three New England locations, points out that during the lunch hour the crowd at the restaurants is "90-percent business people." According to Ciulla, whatever the layout of its future restaurants and whatever the targeted demographic, FiRE + iCE will take a deliberate approach to future expansion. "I want to make sure we have the management and the infrastructure in place," Ciulla explains. Current plans call for the opening of "two to four company-owned stores a year." Recent franchising agreements with the lodging division of Washington-based Marriott International and Louisville, Ky.-based entertainment-complex operator Jillian's Entertainment Inc. will help drive FiRE + iCE's growth, Miller says. Under the agreement with Marriot, FiRE + iCE will develop a 150- to 200-seat restaurant at the Marriott Vacation Club resort currently under construction in Lake Tahoe, Nev. "Putting full-service restaurants in our Vacation Club International resorts is a new development for us," Jill Davies, vice president of restaurants for Marriott Lodging, says. "FiRE + iCE offers a good package -- a fresh menu, energy and excitement. It has a good feel, with people mingling and talking." Davies says Marriott will "do one first and see how it goes." She adds that the FiRE + iCE concept seems "suited for a resort on international property, and where we have opportunities, it might be interesting." The FiRE + iCE in Lake Tahoe currently is scheduled to open in the spring of 2002. According to Steven Foster, founder and chief executive of Jillian's, FiRE + iCE will be "one of the venues in our 60,000-square-foot big box [entertainment complex] in Scottsdale, Arizona." FiRE + iCE will occupy approximately 6,000 square feet in the venue, which is scheduled to open at the end of 2001, Foster explains. "FiRE + iCE is a high-energy, interactive environment that fits very well with our concept," he says. Other franchising and partnership arrangements are under discussion, according to Miller. As FiRE + iCE adds new links to its chain of restaurants, "the challenge is to replicate an experience that is not canned," Rosen says. "How do you standardize the atypical?" Miller sees the need to evolve and renew constantly the FiRE + iCE concept as both the major challenge and a main joy presented by his work with the company. "It is fun to be involved in innovation, to be mindful of it and try to capture it," Miller says. "To move forward, not stepping in the same footprints in the snow over and over again, but by finding a new path." Owners: group of private investors headed by jim miller |
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