- トランプ氏、日米安保条約「変えなければ」 読売新聞
- 不公平見直す必要、安倍首相に伝達=日米安保条約破棄せず―トランプ氏 (2019年6月29日) - エキサイトニュース エキサイトニュース
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トランプ氏、日米安保条約「変えなければ」 - 読売新聞
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Sepuluh perusahaan besar dunia menguasai lebih dari 50 restoran ternama dalam jaringan bisnis restoran, antara lain Panera,...
31年ぶりとなる商業捕鯨の再開で、沖合操業船団の母船となる日新丸(8145トン)が6月30日、山口県下関市に入港し、その内部が報道陣に公開された。南極海や北西 ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示30日午後、トランプ米大統領が北朝鮮の金正恩委員長と板門店で会談した。突然の会談だったが、2020年の大統領選を意識した行動だと言えると筆者。「朝鮮半島の平和」 ...
Seorang pemuda di Flowery Branch dipuji sebagai pahlawan setelah berhasil menyelamatkan anak laki-laki yang tersedak.
埼玉県久喜市のアパート敷地内で男性2人が襲われ1人が死亡、もう1人が重傷を負った事件で、県警は1日、重傷の男性への殺人未遂の疑いで、ベトナム国籍の職業不詳 ...
梅雨前線の影響で、西日本と東日本では7月3日頃にかけて雷を伴った非常に激しい雨が降り、大雨となるところがあるとして、気象庁は土砂災害や河川の増水・氾濫、低い ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示第2次安倍内閣の発足から6年半。さまざまな不祥事や問題発言を重ねながらも、支持率は一定の水準を保ち続ける。なぜか。ゆるやかに漂う「安倍支持」の空気を追った。
Seorang pemuda di Flowery Branch, Georgia, Amerika Serikat dipuji sebagai pahlawan setelah berhasil menyelamatkan anak laki-laki yang tersedak.
Forget the rumors that are flying around, says Paul Matulich, who started Steamer’s Grillhouse in 1979 with his brother Mark and sister Linda.
“We’re not closing, that’s for sure,” Matulich says. “We’ve had way too much fun for 40 years to stop now! We’re going strong. I still love what I do. The community has been very supportive. Things are in a positive forward motion.”
He’s working on a new lease agreement, and has already begun upgrades to the restaurant, which moved to its present location on University Avenue in 1999. New floors are already underway, and new upholstery is in the works.
“Everything costs money, money, money,” Matulich says, adding that he wants to add an oyster bar like in the old days. He’s also planning “Tribute Thursdays,” which will kick in once the remodeling is done, and will feature dishes from the original cafe menu, like calamari steak.
While he plans to update the menu going forward, some of the iconic items like the linguini with prawns, mushrooms and crab in garlic lemon butter sauce will not be leaving anytime soon. “I put two kids through college on that linguini,” Matulich chuckles.
Are his kids at all interested in the business? “Heck no, it’s not for everybody,” he admits. “It requires a certain kind of mentality to want to put out the same beautifully plated dish over and over. My son worked here as a busboy and constantly commented on how he couldn’t do what I do in the kitchen. He said it takes too much work. It takes such commitment.”
His daughter, who now works at Yelp, was a cocktail waitress and hostess at the restaurant while attending the University of Santa Clara and loved it. But again, restaurant life is not for everyone.
“It was hard to find help back in 1979 when we first opened, and it’s even harder now,” Matulich says. “The labor market is so tight and so competitive. And the kids who live here in Los Gatos don’t need summer jobs to make money, so the pool is even smaller. We are paying way above minimum wage, and our workers have to commute. We’re lucky to have the staff we do, and many of them have been here over 20 years with us.”
The labor market is so tight, in fact, that he gets calls all the time from construction companies looking for day labor. That used to be the model: People would work construction during the day and in a restaurant at night.
How did those rumors of demise get started? Well, there were a lot of vacancies downtown and rents were rising, and the rumor mill began churning. Matulich admits he was getting offers from other cities to open a second location, but he didn’t want to dilute the brand. Plus, he feels like he needs to be present to guarantee that consistency and quality that people have come to expect over 40 years. So he took out ads in the local papers saying, “We’re are not closing!” He says he thinks it helped a little, but once people start talking in a small town, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
He emphasizes that he intends to continue keeping a lot of people employed, since a lot of people depend on this business being here.
Matulich reflects back to how Steamer’s started, as a humble café with 12 tables and eight seats at the oyster bar. He was involved in opening the Courtside property at that time, and had been involved in the original opening crew at Sundance in Palo Alto. As he rattles off the names of half a dozen restaurant entrepreneurs with whom he worked in the business and all the places they opened, it becomes apparent that this is truly his passion and his life’s work.
At the time he leveraged the Courtside crew to help him launch Steamer’s, his brother was working at a Sheraton in Hawaii and his sister was managing a tasting room outside Gilroy. He thought they could all be part of something together, and thus Steamer’s was born. Ever since, his sister has been running the office and doing the bookkeeping, plus handling all the activities they participate in, like Jazz on the Plazz.
The Matulich family grew up near Salinas. “My mother was Italian, right off the boat. She may have been born on the boat! My father was Croatian and a butcher, so he taught us all about meat, and we were surrounded by agriculture. We grew up cooking all our lives. We got to know all the produce farmers, Foxy Lettuce, all those guys. We all went to Palma High.”
He tells the story of the early days of Steamer’s Cafe. “My family was involved in liquor distribution, and the year we opened, one of the Mondavis came by and said, ‘You should do a wine bar! It’s a new concept that’s big. Open a bunch of Italian wines and people will buy wine by the glass.’ At the time, people were still drinking things like Mateus and Lancer, and we were very successful with imports. In fact, we became the No. 1 seller of Soave Bolla in California.”
After the first year, they did so well that they were rated by Barrons as the No. 1 grossing restaurant in the country per square foot. “I had no idea this had happened until a Japanese guy came into the restaurant and told me that was the reason he was here,” Matulich says. “He really thought this concept could take off in Japan. In fact, some people in Scottsdale opened a place called Steamer’s, using our logo and menu!”
The restaurant met with great success, in part because of the great cocktails; Matulich loves to bartend. “We have our own special glassware blown in Mexico by a buddy of mine,” he says. “Our margarita glasses are really cool; people like stuff like that. I’ve even had people asking about the colors I use on my walls; they want to duplicate them in their own homes.”
That brings to mind when he was demolishing the old cafe to move into larger quarters. “People came to me and said, ‘I want table such and such because that’s where I got engaged.’ I had a guy buy my entire bar for his house. The emotional connection of people to the place was amazing. Now I have the kids and even grandkids of people who used to work here coming back to visit. There’s no way I can be this old!”
One thing that never gets old, though, is coming up with new dishes or new twists on existing ones. Pasta and pizza have long been among Matulich’s favorites to make.
In fact, Matulich went to San Francisco’s North Beach to take classes from Tony Gemignani of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, and has been certified by one of the four schools in Italy that award certificates to proficient makers of pizza: He might frame that certificate at some point. He imports flour directly from Italy and has perfected the recipe, after many years of honing. He even took some classes from Tom McNaughton of Flour + Water in the Mission in San Francisco, who went to Bologna to study pasta making from the ladies there, and then opened a pasta lab.Pizza is an art he continues to pursue. “There are so many variations of dough types!” he says. “We learned about St. Louis, Detroit, New York and of course, Chicago deep dish. I like keeping up with what’s going on. I still have the same pasta machine from Italy I bought in 1982; they have to fabricate parts for it over there.”
Some things just keep on keeping on. Count Steamer’s among them. The restaurant is located at 31 University Ave, Los Gatos. For hours, menus and reservations, visit http://steamers-restaurant.com.
For the fourth year in a row, Chick-fil A has topped the list as America’s #1 fast food chain restaurant based on customer satisfaction.
The restaurant scored 86 on a scale of 100, besting all other restaurant chains by at least four points.
There are at least four Chick-fil A restaurants in the Harrisburg area, with a new one planned new in Camp Hill, although the plan has drawn controversyfrom local residents who don’t want the additional traffic.
Chick-fil A kept its top ranking despite dropping one point from the prior year. The chain has topped the rankings since the American Customer Satisfaction Index began tracking the company.
The next highest-ranking chain on this year’s list was Panera at 81 points, behind a collection of smaller companies that garnered 82 points.
Four chains tied for third place at 80 points: Papa John’s pizza, Arby’s, Chipotle and Pizza Hut.
Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A moved up four spots in the National Restaurant News’ list of Top 200 American chains for systemwide sales.
The Atlanta-based fast food company saw $10.46 billion in total sales for 2018, up from $8.97 billion in 2017, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The Washington Post reports that the chain’s ascent is notable in part because most other restaurant traffic stayed flat.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/06/chick-fil-a-named-americas-favorite-fast-food-restaurant-again.html 2019-06-30 12:56:00Z[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Black Restaurant Week WDSU New OrleansBlack Restaurant Week happening now through July 7th. Advertisement. Recommended. Complementing murals connecting US and Iraq kids among the stories ...
https://www.wdsu.com/article/black-restaurant-week/28231212 2019-06-30 03:31:00Z[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Florida man reportedly breaks into restaurant, makes himself burger, steals safe WDAF FOX4 Kansas CityMARTIN COUNTY, Fla. - Florida authorities are attempting to identify a man they say broke into a restaurant and made himself a meal. According to a Facebook ...
https://fox4kc.com/2019/06/29/florida-man-reportedly-breaks-into-restaurant-makes-himself-burger-steals-safe/ 2019-06-29 23:35:00Z[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Florida man reportedly breaks into restaurant, makes himself burger, steals safe FOX 59 IndianapolisMARTIN COUNTY, Fla. - The Martin County Sheriff's Office is looking for help identifying a man they say broke into a restaurant and made himself a meal.
https://fox59.com/2019/06/29/florida-man-reportedly-breaks-into-restaurant-makes-himself-burger-steals-safe/ 2019-06-29 21:26:00Zネット上で先日、「定年退職した父親が春から保育園で働いていたものの、女性職員か.
20カ国・地域(G20)首脳会議(サミット)で、本来は規制中の高速道路を走行できないロシアの関係車両が、全面通行止めが実施されていた阪神高速を一時走っていた ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示28日に開幕したG20大阪サミット。大阪城公園の中の大阪迎賓館で文化行事と夕食会が行われるのに先立ち、安倍首相と昭恵夫人が、各国の首脳陣を出迎えた。
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示安倍首相は28日、G20の夕食会で文在寅大統領を自分と別のテーブルにした。徴用工問題を放任している韓国に対し、厳しい認識を示す狙いがあるという。偶発的な立ち話 ...
週明けにかけて、活発化する梅雨前線の影響で、西日本や北陸を中心に大雨となるおそれがあります。九州では総雨量が500ミリ以上という災害級の大雨が計算されている ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示20カ国・地域(G20)首脳会議(サミット)で、本来は規制中の高速道路を走行できないロシアの関係車両が、全面通行止めが実施されていた阪神高速を一時走っていた ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示大阪府警西成署は30日、傷害容疑で無職の19歳少年を現行犯逮捕した。西成区天下茶屋のスナックで、居合わせた男性客を殴った疑い。男性客は搬送先の病院で死亡し ...
28日午後10時ごろ、東京都江戸川区船堀3丁目のマンションで、「両親がもめている。母の腕に包丁が刺さっている」と110番通報があった。警察官がかけつけると、この ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示G20に伴う交通規制中の阪神高速湾岸線で27日、ロシア総領事館の車両が、警察車両の先導なく単独で走行していたことが、大阪府警への取材でわかった。府警は、関西 ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示Namanya Mirazur dan berlokasi di Menton, Prancis.
東京都江戸川区船堀のマンション一室で女性が刺されて死亡した事件で、現場から逃亡していた夫(39)とみられる男が近くの区立幼稚園で首をつって死亡しているのが ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示BANJARMASIN - Kekurangan modal, pembangunan Restoran Terapung di Sungai Martapura dipastikan berjalan…
29日から7月2日、本州付近に停滞する梅雨前線の活動が活発化する予想だ。九州から北陸にかけて、局地的に雷をともなった滝のような雨が降るという。同じ地域で数日間 ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示20カ国・地域(G20)首脳会議(サミット)で、本来は規制中の高速道路を走行できないロシアの関係車両が、全面通行止めが実施されていた阪神高速を一時走っていた ...
Google ニュースですべての記事を表示Lisa Vanderpump could be expanding her West Hollywood restaurant empire, Page Six has learned.
An LA source told us of the “Vanderpump Rules” star: “Lisa’s hubby, Ken, was seen last week at 8755 Melrose near Robertson Boulevard. It’s around the corner from Sur. It looked like he was with a broker and an assistant. The vacant restaurant had a ‘leased’ sign on it a few days later,” the spy said.
In addition to Sur, Lisa and Ken also own LA eateries Pump and Villa Blanca, plus Tom Tom with co-stars Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz, and new Vanderpump Cocktail Garden in Vegas.
A pal said of the possible new space: “A new addition to their current holdings wouldn’t surprise me at all,” because Lisa and Ken are always on the hunt for the next “hot spot.”
For many people, opening a restaurant is a dream. One of the many things I find so interesting about the restaurant business is the blend of creative artistry and the detailed and challenging business aspects necessary to be successful. As an Adjunct Instructor at NYU's School of Professional Studies, I teach restaurant concept development and business planning. On several occasions, I have been asked by my students to summarize the top issues that one must consider when planning to open a restaurant. Generally, regardless of the type of restaurant, the planning and considerations are the same. I'll cover a few of the top line elements here.
At the beginning of the process, you should write a simple business plan. It would help if you thought about the many pieces of the puzzle connected to a successful outcome. Many novice restaurateurs, very often chefs, only consider the food component, but there is so much more. A well thought out business plan will include creating a unique concept, a competitive analysis, site selection, financial projections, equipment needs, staffing, and of course, the menu.
Let's start with a concept
It's essential that your restaurant offers a unique experience. It could be a Wine Bar with small plates, or a BBQ theme or a Create Your Plate concept. Whatever you decide, it is critical that the environment and "vibe" within the restaurant places the guest firmly inside the experience you're attempting to create. Don't confuse the guest with a concept that's disconnected. As I often remind my clients, "everything touches everything else." For instance, you wouldn't use elegant tableware in a fried chicken restaurant or disposable plates in an upscale steakhouse. As obvious as this may seem on the broader elements, it's essential to take that idea to every detail of the restaurant concept, no matter how small. Everything from the paint color to the music to the tabletops to the wall hanging must work together. The decor elements, the menu, and the service level need to provide the guests with a seamless experience that, when done well, goes almost unnoticed because it's natural and authentic.
If You Build It, Will They Come?
Building a clientele is never as easy as hanging a sign over the door. It takes smart planning, execution of marketing, and living up to the promise in your mission and brand position statement. You should never assume, "if you build it, they will come." Questions to ask yourself are; how will my restaurant connect with people? Why does my restaurant exist? What type of people am I looking to attract? What do they read or watch? How do they spend their spare time? What is the best way to reach them? Your concept should appeal to a particular, selected audience. There is no such thing as "everyone is my customer." Knowing why and for whom your restaurant exists is crucial to success. Your marketing plan should offer compelling reasons why that guest base should frequent your establishment regularly. Is the concept created for health-conscious people? Is it aimed at Millennials or Baby Boomers? It is a full menu or dessert brand or a convenient, fast food, value-based concept. Your social media, print ads, and community outreach should focus on one single audience with one single message. Once you've built a loyal base of customers and repeat business, then you should consider expanding your base by marketing to others in the area with a proposition that appeals to them.
Your People Plan is Key
A great team will help you win everyday. Hiring great people is the first step in delivering service excellence and a consistent product to your guests. Your mission statement "the why" along with a corporate culture that emphasizes respect for employees, commitment to your guests, service to the community, and concern for the environment will guide you when selecting your staff. It's not enough to hire people with restaurant experience; they should also understand and be excited about the mission of the restaurant. If not, they will go through the motions with an inauthentic approach and often fail at exceeding guest expectations. Examine your corporate core values and hire people that match it. Next, supply your staff with comprehensive, ongoing training and the proper tools so can they carry out the day to day tasks flawlessly. Hire for qualities, train for skills.
The Market and Competition
Understanding the market area where you'd like to open your restaurant is a crucial element to the plan. Carefully research the demographics to ensure there are enough people in the area that match whom you believe will embrace your concept. When looking for your location, work with an experienced commercial broker that can supply you with data to help you choose the area and the site correctly.
A full competitive analysis is also essential. For example, check the pricing of your competition. Be sure you're not over or underpriced for the market. Check other services they offer, such as delivery and online ordering. Spend time in the market area, dine several times at as many competitors as possible, and position your restaurant to address the missing needs in the market. Having a unique value and selling proposition will keep you ahead of the game. Remember, everyone is vying for the same consumer dollars, so you need to create points of differentiation that will help your establishment stand out from the competition.
Consistently Great Food
Your menu must not only be relevant to the concept and the market but should be prepared and served perfectly every time. Restaurant guests expect dishes they grown to love to have the same flavor and high quality each time they visit. Inconsistent products can lead to disappointed guests, bad reviews, and slumping business. Your menu should be not only delicious but also simple to execute. The more straightforward the menu, the less chance of mistakes in preparation. Consistency increases guest satisfaction. Some chefs and "foodies" create menu items that are too complicated and require a highly skilled professional in the kitchen. This approach is fine if you intend to open a high-end restaurant staffed with high price personnel, but not in a fast-casual or family restaurant setting. A winning menu is simple, fresh, relevant, and great tasting. A competent chef can assist in developing dishes that are unique and great tasting that are also simple to produce with less skilled labor. If you have aspirations of owning more than one location, then simple execution, and consistent products are a must to achieve the goal of operating multiple restaurants.
Cash Is King
There are many reasons why restaurants fold. It could be the wrong concept, poor choice of location, not correctly researching the competition, poor service, an uninspiring menu, or bad food, to name a few. That said, the negative impact of undercapitalization may be the most frequent cause of restaurant failures. Knowing how much money you need to launch the restaurant is only the tip of the iceberg. You must assess ongoing cash needs while the restaurant is newly opened and gaining momentum. It may take many months for a restaurant to break even and then eventually become profitable. Being able to support the financial needs during this phase is often the "make or break" challenge that many new restaurateurs cannot overcome. A well thought out projection model that you create with the help of a professional financial advisor can save you from the frustration, negative financial impact and heartbreak of a failed restaurant. Considering capital needs for the first twelve to fifteen months is not only prudent but essential to the success of any new restaurant. You must be prepared to cover the operational costs and expenses as the restaurant "ramps up." Carefully consider your cash needs and how much working capital you must have on hand, ready to deploy.
Have A Plan And Follow Your Dream
Owning a restaurant can be personally rewarding and profitable. Many people have built great restaurant companies following these simple guidelines. Desire and passion will only get you so far. Create your business plan as a road map. Your plan will help you stay on track when dealing with the many moving parts of launching and successfully operating a new restaurant.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/garyocchiogrosso/2019/06/29/key-tips-for-launching-a-successful-restaurant/ 2019-06-29 16:57:27ZWelcome! To bring you the best content on our sites and applications, Meredith partners with third party advertisers to serve digital ads, including personalized digital ads. Those advertisers use tracking technologies to collect information about your activity on our sites and applications and across the Internet and your other apps and devices.
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Do I miss the job of ceaselessly wandering the country — opining on the nation’s buzziest openings, blitzing through barbecue restaurants in North Carolina or Texas, surveying the 1980s-era Cantonese restaurants in Vancouver and Richmond, British Columbia? Honestly, after all that time on the road, I do not. Before one rare flight, part of my psyche freaked out like a devoted pet whose person has pulled out the suitcase and started packing. I mean, I made it to LAX, but basically I had to pat myself on the head and promise I’d be back home very, very soon.
https://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-critics-tasting-notes-newsletter-20190629-story.html 2019-06-29 13:00:00ZSTRAND, South Africa — For many white children growing up in apartheid South Africa, the Spur Steak Ranches restaurant chain was a home away from home, offering kid-friendly meals and play areas with an American Wild West theme.
For their parents, the chain’s outposts served as the social center in many rural towns and in suburbs like Strand, a once-popular beach resort about 30 miles from Cape Town.
“A lot of people thought of Spur as their living room,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand consultant.
But some of Spur’s most ardent fans have been staying away, supporting a boycott now entering its third year that has highlighted the underlying racial tensions in South African society.
The former patrons speak in emotional terms of a betrayal by a cherished brand, whose outposts were effectively barred to blacks during apartheid because of their locations in whites-only areas.
“I’ll never set foot inside that place again,” said Keith van Eeden, who lives in Strand and was a loyal Spur customer for more than three decades, religiously taking his three children there on their birthdays.
“Spur is only for blacks now,” Mr. van Eeden added. “They don’t want the whites.”
The boycott began in 2017 when Spur sided with a black woman who was in a confrontation with a white man at a franchise in Johannesburg. But the continuing campaign against the chain — promoted by South Africa’s most prominent groups that advocate white-minority rights — reflects something more profound than lingering bitterness over that dispute.
It’s a demonstration of a strong, and what appears to be a growing, sense of resentment among many white South Africans a quarter of a century after they lost political power, and the outrages and brutalities of apartheid were ended.
In the May general elections to elect a new National Assembly, the party that enjoyed the biggest increase in its share of the vote was Freedom Front Plus — a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black South Africans. The party also opposes the African National Congress’s policy of expropriating white-owned land without compensation, which is not yet law.
In the fight that started the boycott, caught on videos that went viral, the two customers are seen arguing over the behavior of their children. The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.
A few days later, Spur issued an apology to the woman and banned the man for his “aggressive manner” and “unacceptable” actions.
Conservative whites were outraged, with many saying both customers should have been banned. The boycott push took on momentum when white-minority lobbying groups got involved. One was AfriForum, which has drawn widespread criticism for its views, including its recent denial that apartheid was a crime against humanity.
The Spur boycott resonated the most among white, working-class Afrikaners like Mr. van Eeden who, while living in a country where whites still disproportionately control the economy, feel resentful about having lost out in the democratic South Africa.
Mr. van Eeden, who runs a rubble removal service in Strand, a stronghold of Afrikaners, said that when apartheid ended, he “wasn’t very happy about it.”
He no longer believes that South Africa is a country for people like him. “If we had money,” he said, “we’d have got out.”
A restaurant chain’s banning of one man for aggressive behavior would hardly seem the sort of perceived grievance to give rise to an impassioned movement, especially in a country where a large majority suffered extreme injustices for decades.
And these complaints about white marginalization do lead to “an eye roll” among many black South Africans, said Wamuwi Mbao, a literary critic and lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who writes about race and identity.
But for many whites, the banning represented a larger symbolic loss. And the breadth and duration of this boycott, whose success caught many by surprise, showed just how many whites were committed to protesting their sense that a cultural touchstone had forsaken them.
Within six months of the boycott, Spur’s nationwide sales dropped by more than 9 percent. That overall dip concealed even deeper losses at the chain’s restaurants in predominantly white areas.
“Nobody in South Africa thought a boycott could be this effective,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand expert, who consulted with Spur on how to manage the protest but no longer works on the chain’s behalf. Spur, he added, was “suddenly being boycotted by the very people they’ve been cultivating as customers for years.”
Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, said business was devastated by the boycott. He had to sell one of the restaurants.
“You go from being O.K. into the red zone within a month,” he said. Mr. Peace recalled regular customers telling him, “‘We love you guys, but we’re just not supporting the brand.’”
The scope and intensity of the boycott, Mr. Peace said, showed just how much anger there was in the nation.
Founded in 1967, Spur helped introduce American-style casual dining to South Africa at a time when the country’s racial policies were increasingly making it an international pariah. Franchises spread quickly, and the chain became one of the country’s most recognizable brands.
During apartheid, Spur did not have an official policy of segregation, said Moshe Apleni, a company spokesman.
But black South Africans were effectively barred from Spur restaurants because they were located in cities and towns restricted to white citizens.
The company’s chief operating officer, Mark Farrelly, said in a radio interview at the height of the boycott in 2017 that the company was facing a “rabid right-wing backlash.” He pointed out that the hardest-hit franchises were located in former strongholds of the Conservative Party, the right-wing party that had opposed the end of apartheid.
In response, the leader of an influential white-minority trade union, Solidarity, wrote in an open letter: “This is about a community that feels estranged in the country. Now, they feel strange in their favorite restaurant as well.”
Since apartheid’s end, Spur, just like supermarkets, department stores and other businesses that once catered largely to white customers, has had to adapt to South Africa’s inexorably changing demographics.
Its white population, now around 8 percent, is shrinking; for all the country’s deeply rooted income inequality, the share of middle-class black consumers is growing.
Black South Africans now account for about 65 percent of the customers at the nation’s more than 280 Spur franchises, according to an internal report prepared for the company.
But individual franchises still depend heavily on white customers.
Sales have slowly recovered nationwide. But business is still not back to normal at some locations, including Mr. Peace’s remaining store, where he said eight families were staying away.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Spur franchise in Strand was half full, with equal numbers of whites, blacks and people of mixed race.
At one table near the play area, a group of young black children sat with their mothers. Waiters had just stomped and clapped through a birthday song.
Anelisa Nqevu had arranged the party for her daughter, who was turning 8. They lived in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township, some 11 miles away.
“Each time I go shopping, she wants me to take her to Spur,” Ms. Nqevu said, her daughter standing nearby.
Despite all the furor around the boycott, Ms. Nqevu said she didn’t feel any racial tension at the restaurant.
“Everyone is welcome there now — black or white,” she said.
STRAND, South Africa — For many white children growing up in apartheid South Africa, the Spur Steak Ranches restaurant chain was a home away from home, offering kid-friendly meals and play areas with an American Wild West theme.
For their parents, the chain’s outposts served as the social center in many rural towns and in suburbs like Strand, a once-popular beach resort about 30 miles from Cape Town.
“A lot of people thought of Spur as their living room,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand consultant.
But some of Spur’s most ardent fans have been staying away, supporting a boycott now entering its third year that has highlighted the underlying racial tensions in South African society.
The former patrons speak in emotional terms of a betrayal by a cherished brand, whose outposts were effectively barred to blacks during apartheid because of their locations in whites-only areas.
“I’ll never set foot inside that place again,” said Keith van Eeden, who lives in Strand and was a loyal Spur customer for more than three decades, religiously taking his three children there on their birthdays.
“Spur is only for blacks now,” Mr. van Eeden added. “They don’t want the whites.”
The boycott began in 2017 when Spur sided with a black woman who was in a confrontation with a white man at a franchise in Johannesburg. But the continuing campaign against the chain — promoted by South Africa’s most prominent groups that advocate white-minority rights — reflects something more profound than lingering bitterness over that dispute.
It’s a demonstration of a strong, and what appears to be a growing, sense of resentment among many white South Africans a quarter of a century after they lost political power, and the outrages and brutalities of apartheid were ended.
In the May general elections to elect a new National Assembly, the party that enjoyed the biggest increase in its share of the vote was Freedom Front Plus — a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black South Africans. The party also opposes the African National Congress’s policy of expropriating white-owned land without compensation, which is not yet law.
In the fight that started the boycott, caught on videos that went viral, the two customers are seen arguing over the behavior of their children. The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.
A few days later, Spur issued an apology to the woman and banned the man for his “aggressive manner” and “unacceptable” actions.
Conservative whites were outraged, with many saying both customers should have been banned. The boycott push took on momentum when white-minority lobbying groups got involved. One was AfriForum, which has drawn widespread criticism for its views, including its recent denial that apartheid was a crime against humanity.
The Spur boycott resonated the most among white, working-class Afrikaners like Mr. van Eeden who, while living in a country where whites still disproportionately control the economy, feel resentful about having lost out in the democratic South Africa.
Mr. van Eeden, who runs a rubble removal service in Strand, a stronghold of Afrikaners, said that when apartheid ended, he “wasn’t very happy about it.”
He no longer believes that South Africa is a country for people like him. “If we had money,” he said, “we’d have got out.”
A restaurant chain’s banning of one man for aggressive behavior would hardly seem the sort of perceived grievance to give rise to an impassioned movement, especially in a country where a large majority suffered extreme injustices for decades.
And these complaints about white marginalization do lead to “an eye roll” among many black South Africans, said Wamuwi Mbao, a literary critic and lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who writes about race and identity.
But for many whites, the banning represented a larger symbolic loss. And the breadth and duration of this boycott, whose success caught many by surprise, showed just how many whites were committed to protesting their sense that a cultural touchstone had forsaken them.
Within six months of the boycott, Spur’s nationwide sales dropped by more than 9 percent. That overall dip concealed even deeper losses at the chain’s restaurants in predominantly white areas.
“Nobody in South Africa thought a boycott could be this effective,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand expert, who consulted with Spur on how to manage the protest but no longer works on the chain’s behalf. Spur, he added, was “suddenly being boycotted by the very people they’ve been cultivating as customers for years.”
Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, said business was devastated by the boycott. He had to sell one of the restaurants.
“You go from being O.K. into the red zone within a month,” he said. Mr. Peace recalled regular customers telling him, “‘We love you guys, but we’re just not supporting the brand.’”
The scope and intensity of the boycott, Mr. Peace said, showed just how much anger there was in the nation.
Founded in 1967, Spur helped introduce American-style casual dining to South Africa at a time when the country’s racial policies were increasingly making it an international pariah. Franchises spread quickly, and the chain became one of the country’s most recognizable brands.
During apartheid, Spur did not have an official policy of segregation, said Moshe Apleni, a company spokesman.
But black South Africans were effectively barred from Spur restaurants because they were located in cities and towns restricted to white citizens.
The company’s chief operating officer, Mark Farrelly, said in a radio interview at the height of the boycott in 2017 that the company was facing a “rabid right-wing backlash.” He pointed out that the hardest-hit franchises were located in former strongholds of the Conservative Party, the right-wing party that had opposed the end of apartheid.
In response, the leader of an influential white-minority trade union, Solidarity, wrote in an open letter: “This is about a community that feels estranged in the country. Now, they feel strange in their favorite restaurant as well.”
Since apartheid’s end, Spur, just like supermarkets, department stores and other businesses that once catered largely to white customers, has had to adapt to South Africa’s inexorably changing demographics.
Its white population, now around 8 percent, is shrinking; for all the country’s deeply rooted income inequality, the share of middle-class black consumers is growing.
Black South Africans now account for about 65 percent of the customers at the nation’s more than 280 Spur franchises, according to an internal report prepared for the company.
But individual franchises still depend heavily on white customers.
Sales have slowly recovered nationwide. But business is still not back to normal at some locations, including Mr. Peace’s remaining store, where he said eight families were staying away.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Spur franchise in Strand was half full, with equal numbers of whites, blacks and people of mixed race.
At one table near the play area, a group of young black children sat with their mothers. Waiters had just stomped and clapped through a birthday song.
Anelisa Nqevu had arranged the party for her daughter, who was turning 8. They lived in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township, some 11 miles away.
“Each time I go shopping, she wants me to take her to Spur,” Ms. Nqevu said, her daughter standing nearby.
Despite all the furor around the boycott, Ms. Nqevu said she didn’t feel any racial tension at the restaurant.
“Everyone is welcome there now — black or white,” she said.
STRAND, South Africa — For many white children growing up in apartheid South Africa, the Spur Steak Ranches restaurant chain was a home away from home, offering kid-friendly meals and play areas with an American Wild West theme.
For their parents, the chain’s outposts served as the social center in many rural towns and in suburbs like Strand, a once-popular beach resort about 30 miles from Cape Town.
“A lot of people thought of Spur as their living room,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand consultant.
But some of Spur’s most ardent fans have been staying away, supporting a boycott now entering its third year that has highlighted the underlying racial tensions in South African society.
The former patrons speak in emotional terms of a betrayal by a cherished brand, whose outposts were effectively barred to blacks during apartheid because of their locations in whites-only areas.
“I’ll never set foot inside that place again,” said Keith van Eeden, who lives in Strand and was a loyal Spur customer for more than three decades, religiously taking his three children there on their birthdays.
“Spur is only for blacks now,” Mr. van Eeden added. “They don’t want the whites.”
The boycott began in 2017 when Spur sided with a black woman who was in a confrontation with a white man at a franchise in Johannesburg. But the continuing campaign against the chain — promoted by South Africa’s most prominent groups that advocate white-minority rights — reflects something more profound than lingering bitterness over that dispute.
It’s a demonstration of a strong, and what appears to be a growing, sense of resentment among many white South Africans a quarter of a century after they lost political power, and the outrages and brutalities of apartheid were ended.
In the May general elections to elect a new National Assembly, the party that enjoyed the biggest increase in its share of the vote was Freedom Front Plus — a small Afrikaner party fighting to repeal affirmative action policies for black South Africans. The party also opposes the African National Congress’s policy of expropriating white-owned land without compensation, which is not yet law.
In the fight that started the boycott, caught on videos that went viral, the two customers are seen arguing over the behavior of their children. The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.
A few days later, Spur issued an apology to the woman and banned the man for his “aggressive manner” and “unacceptable” actions.
Conservative whites were outraged, with many saying both customers should have been banned. The boycott push took on momentum when white-minority lobbying groups got involved. One was AfriForum, which has drawn widespread criticism for its views, including its recent denial that apartheid was a crime against humanity.
The Spur boycott resonated the most among white, working-class Afrikaners like Mr. van Eeden who, while living in a country where whites still disproportionately control the economy, feel resentful about having lost out in the democratic South Africa.
Mr. van Eeden, who runs a rubble removal service in Strand, a stronghold of Afrikaners, said that when apartheid ended, he “wasn’t very happy about it.”
He no longer believes that South Africa is a country for people like him. “If we had money,” he said, “we’d have got out.”
A restaurant chain’s banning of one man for aggressive behavior would hardly seem the sort of perceived grievance to give rise to an impassioned movement, especially in a country where a large majority suffered extreme injustices for decades.
And these complaints about white marginalization do lead to “an eye roll” among many black South Africans, said Wamuwi Mbao, a literary critic and lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who writes about race and identity.
But for many whites, the banning represented a larger symbolic loss. And the breadth and duration of this boycott, whose success caught many by surprise, showed just how many whites were committed to protesting their sense that a cultural touchstone had forsaken them.
Within six months of the boycott, Spur’s nationwide sales dropped by more than 9 percent. That overall dip concealed even deeper losses at the chain’s restaurants in predominantly white areas.
“Nobody in South Africa thought a boycott could be this effective,” said Johan Pienaar, a brand expert, who consulted with Spur on how to manage the protest but no longer works on the chain’s behalf. Spur, he added, was “suddenly being boycotted by the very people they’ve been cultivating as customers for years.”
Arthur Peace, whose family owned two Spur franchises in the predominantly white suburbs north of Cape Town, said business was devastated by the boycott. He had to sell one of the restaurants.
“You go from being O.K. into the red zone within a month,” he said. Mr. Peace recalled regular customers telling him, “‘We love you guys, but we’re just not supporting the brand.’”
The scope and intensity of the boycott, Mr. Peace said, showed just how much anger there was in the nation.
Founded in 1967, Spur helped introduce American-style casual dining to South Africa at a time when the country’s racial policies were increasingly making it an international pariah. Franchises spread quickly, and the chain became one of the country’s most recognizable brands.
During apartheid, Spur did not have an official policy of segregation, said Moshe Apleni, a company spokesman.
But black South Africans were effectively barred from Spur restaurants because they were located in cities and towns restricted to white citizens.
The company’s chief operating officer, Mark Farrelly, said in a radio interview at the height of the boycott in 2017 that the company was facing a “rabid right-wing backlash.” He pointed out that the hardest-hit franchises were located in former strongholds of the Conservative Party, the right-wing party that had opposed the end of apartheid.
In response, the leader of an influential white-minority trade union, Solidarity, wrote in an open letter: “This is about a community that feels estranged in the country. Now, they feel strange in their favorite restaurant as well.”
Since apartheid’s end, Spur, just like supermarkets, department stores and other businesses that once catered largely to white customers, has had to adapt to South Africa’s inexorably changing demographics.
Its white population, now around 8 percent, is shrinking; for all the country’s deeply rooted income inequality, the share of middle-class black consumers is growing.
Black South Africans now account for about 65 percent of the customers at the nation’s more than 280 Spur franchises, according to an internal report prepared for the company.
But individual franchises still depend heavily on white customers.
Sales have slowly recovered nationwide. But business is still not back to normal at some locations, including Mr. Peace’s remaining store, where he said eight families were staying away.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Spur franchise in Strand was half full, with equal numbers of whites, blacks and people of mixed race.
At one table near the play area, a group of young black children sat with their mothers. Waiters had just stomped and clapped through a birthday song.
Anelisa Nqevu had arranged the party for her daughter, who was turning 8. They lived in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township, some 11 miles away.
“Each time I go shopping, she wants me to take her to Spur,” Ms. Nqevu said, her daughter standing nearby.
Despite all the furor around the boycott, Ms. Nqevu said she didn’t feel any racial tension at the restaurant.
“Everyone is welcome there now — black or white,” she said.