Downtown bars follow city’s population growth north
Downtown bars follow city’s population growth north
Written by Rachel Youens Saturday, 07 July 2007
In the wake of major employers settling into an area comes the flood of businesses prepared to serve all of the new employees. But retail and housing aren’t the only segments capitalizing on Northwest Austin’s young and affluent population.
Bars and restaurants formerly thought of as downtown or south Austin staples are breaking into the Northwest Austin market and discovering the changes necessary to cater to the area’s clientele.
“Every customer in every area is different, and we built this location around the average age and style for employees of Freescale, Cisco and Dell. In this neighborhood, we have a lot of young executives. I wanted to do something that was still our food, still Austin, but would fit within that profile,” said Jorge Garcia, owner of Curra’s restaurant which opened its first north Austin location in August 2006 along Parmer Lane.
The traditional Mexican food restaurant has had locations open in south and central Austin since 1995 and 2001 respectively. In north Austin however, it has made changes to their design as it finds itself surrounded by a different set of customers and a different set of competition.
“This location is more bar oriented because we did studies on the demographics and on how many people were frequenting bars and what their need was. We saw a big demand for happy hours and some sort of bar scene,” Garcia said. “At the same time we are a very family oriented restaurant, but we wanted to make it a place where customers could also watch sports and drink good margaritas.”
One of Garcia’s biggest challenges has been acclimating customers to the type of food Curra’s sells: a more eclectic style of Mexican food than most north Austin Tex-mex restaurants. Curra’s is facing comparison to restaurants Garcia doesn’t really consider in its same vein, such as Chuy’s.
Opal Divine’s, a pub with south and downtown locations, also faces the same challenge with its newest location along MoPac near Parmer.
“At our other locations, more than 50 percent of our sales come from alcohol. At this location, more than 50 percent comes from food,” Opal Divine’s CEO Michael Parker said.
Although the north location serves the same menu as Opal Divine’s other locations, the spaciousness of the new location, formerly Sea Island restaurant, means more people feel invited to sit down and eat rather than drink.
“We’re not used to being compared to places like Chili’s,” Parker said. “The average stay at our other locations is 90 minutes and people sit and drink a beer. Here customers just sort of blow and go. That’s why they compare Opal Divine’s, they don’t know any other locations quite like it. We are sort of the only thing out here in this niche.”
Other more traditional bars are embracing the differences in the north Austin customers and turning it into a business strategy. After noticing customers were frequently ordering pizzas to the bar, the north Little Woodrow’s location at Parmer Lane and McNeil Drive decided to add a pizza and wing restaurant next door. Out of their six locations in both Houston and Austin, this is the first to incorporate food. Owner Danny Evans plans to include the restaurant and bar model into his next location coming to far south Austin.
“There were so many people out north and no place to go to hang out, have happy hour or watch sports,” Evans said. “With the amount of traffic and people out there, the location was a natural choice. Lots of people thought I was nuts as one of the first ones out there, and in that location.”
One of the advantages to being “out there,” was that the north location of Woodrow’s is exempt from the City of Austin’s smoking ban. Evans feels that the bar’s other location, on west 6th Street, helps feed the word of mouth that pushes customers to their bar. However, Woodrow’s is incorporating a new element to its concept that aims to serve areas like Northwest Austin.
“Our concept now is that we’re going into nice shopping developments where there’s a void to be filled, where we can get big patio and outdoor space,” Evans said.
Rather than building in new shopping developments The Hideout Pub’s business plan is built on finding old and awkward locations to transform into neighborhood bars. The Hideout is now barely recognizable from its former life as a 7-11, and owners Brian Hyde and Marcos Canchola have managed to transform the location into a place where “everybody knows your name.” Last month The Hideout outsold one of Hyde and Canchola’s other locations, Barflys along Airport Boulevard, for the first time.
“Our downtown location, Mugshots on 7th Street, is always susceptible to the college market, and the service industry is always really impacted when the students leave. There’s also more bars there, so people hop from bar to bar and they don’t really stay in one place,” Canchola said.
The Hideout, open since April 2006, is also the only one of Canchola’s bars that serves food. It was part of the location’s zoning that alcohol alone could not be served there. However, Canchola’s partner Brian Hyde has the bulk of his experience in food service, and he says that expanding into serving food is just a natural progression if they plan to expand their bars into other neighborhoods.
“Both of our other locations are neighborhood bars. That’s what we do; it’s our business model. This area of Northwest Austin was just another neighborhood, and people have been responding to the idea of having a neighborhood bar.”
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