McCormick & Schmick’s Downtown Store Closes One Day After Acquisition by Landry’s

McCormick & Schmick's

The problem with building up a successful restaurant chain and then selling that chain is that ultimately, there are casualties. Landry’s acquisition of McCormick and Schmick’s led to that first such casualty yesterday: the downtown Austin M&S store. The Domain M&S store, from all reports I’ve heard, will remain open.

I was not surprised by the move. Disappointed yes, because I thought chef Brian was very talented. But not surprised. Lanrdy’s Chairman Tilman Fertitta is a bottom line businessman and when you have to pay $34k a month in rent , it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that you’d better have a restaurant that’s rocking at least 5-6 nights per week (the downtown location apparently was not).

So when Congress GM Rich Everett was let go last year at about the time negotiations with Fertitta were beginning, I noted that Everett’s replacement was not from inside the company but from Dave and Buster’s. Seemed like the move might have been to hire a caretaker GM to save money while the sale moved forward. I may be wrong, but given the events of the past few days, I’m not so sure.

At any rate, it’s too damned bad. I liked the food there. Perhaps Fertitta, who just acquired Morton’s as well, plans to put one of the popular steakhouses in the space. It’s about the only thing that would work because the restaurant space was not actually owned by M&S. Well, we shall see. And along that front, I’ve heard that despite all the positive assurances from Darden’s, there’s been a bit of resume sending from Eddie V’s staffers as well. It’s an unfortunate part of the hospitality business but one that doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.