Dunwoody Loses the Battle of Houston’s
What does it say about a community when a Houston’s goes out of business? Houston’s has been among the most successful restaurant chains in Atlanta history. The restaurants made their name by being the best of the “glorified burger/fern bar” joints in the city. Waits have been as long as two hours. Now, the Ashford Dunwoody location has gone belly up.
According to several websites, a few elements precipitated the close. First, websites noted that of all the Houston’s, the Ashford Dunwoody location had the worst customer service. This apparently lead to the store being the worst financial performer of all the Houston’s in the metro area. When J. Alexander’s (A Houston’s knock off) offered a substantial payout for the location, Houston’s accepted and closed.
It seems two trends have intersected to make this happen. First is the national trend toward squeezing out the middle. Houston is in a similar situation to department stores such as J.C. Penny’s, Montgomery Ward, and Sears. These stores suffered from price competition from their downmarket rivals such as Target and Wal-Mart and lost upper end customers to Nordstrom and Bloomingdales. The middle was squeezed out. In the Perimeter area, the increase in property values has meant that staying competitive requires either high volume and profit items such as Chili’s or more upscale environments such as Garrison’s. The middle gets squeezed.
The second element here is the quality of service deteriorated. This seems to be one of the big subjects in Atlanta right now. Quality waitrons are harder to find. Bartenders don’t know their drinks, waitrons don’t know their food, and the shortage of qualified staff has lead restaurant managers to accept lower standards. Restaurant such as Houston’s suffer disproportionately when the service drops because people are aware of their team concept and come with expectations. Nothing hurts a restaurant with a good reputation more than poor service.
Still the neighborhood is suffering here. Houston’s was the best of the fern bars. If too many mid-list restaurants are removed the neighborhood has fewer reasonably options. Further, it means that local, one of a kind restaurants have less chance of opening and surviving. That hurts everyone.
June 5th, 2007 at 10:53 am
I’m not sure that poor service is about not knowing the food or drinks at these restaurants. The menus typically don’t change that much. The poor service is a probably more attributable to having folks that are working for below minimum wage and tips while simlutaneously looking for something else or trying to get through school.
I suspect that part of the culprit here is just the general economy. Most Atlantans with disposable income commute. With gas prices at record highs, some cut back on luxuries like eating out.
June 5th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
That Houston’s needed to go, and in a bad way. Actually, that whole stretch of Ashford-Dunwoody is a dead slot. Olive Garden, Chili’s, Smoky Bones, and this J.Alexander’s (which by its name, should do for dinner what J.Christopher did for breakfast…hello, brand overlap. :-). And a super Wal-mart, and Border’s. Add that with the “Dunwoody Village”, and you ‘ve got prime decay potential.
The new restaurant would be well advised to create a window or five, or just gut the building to the frame, and start over.
That aside, the perimeter area is booming. Note the addition of the two, chainy-type “McFancies” that camped in Perimeter Mall’s parking lot (outparcels, I believe they’re called), bringing the total McFancy count to 7. Not to be outdone, McDonald’s itself has bought the lot on the corner of Abernathy and Ashford-Dunwoody, and will build another unit there. The Strip Mall 2.0 that was the Bellsouth building is getting a _lot_ more traffic these days, as well. The Kroger over in Sandy Springs just got surrounded by two-level shopping center, which I now call “Fort Kroger”, and The Prado looks like it’s undergoing renovation.
An official for the all-powerful, Dunwoody HOA even produced a “we’re going to redevelop, get over it” letter for the local fishwrap. _That_ was amazing.
June 26th, 2007 at 2:47 am
I don’t think the Houston’s service went down at that location compared to other Houston’s locations in the area. I worked at the Dunwoody location for about 6 months before it closed. I now work at another location and the teamwork service is not there as much is was at Dunwoody and other servers who transfered to other locations say the same. What I would say is that all of the Houston’s have been short staff for a while which makes them higher quality servers, but have to put them on busy shifts when they are not ready. The location still make decent money, but not as much as they use to. Their sales were about 5 million in the last fiscal year.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
That Houston’s was THE WORST. First, as someone else pointed out, the whole strip center needs to be leveled. The median income in DUnwoody is THE HIGHEST per person in all of Atlanta metro, almost double that of Buckhead and surpassing Alpharetta. Midtown and downtow are basically poverty-level, although there are some wealthy enclaves (Ansley, some parts of Morningside). Dunwoody needs to be completely redeveloped with major landscaping to be more of a cool walking village concept. Shops, food, etc. All these mini-malls are killing everything.
Back to Houstons: I never went to this place without having to wait and wait to get a table. Never. ANd when I did, I noticed tons of empty ones, just not enough servers. And yes, the menu never changes but the servers are SO inept. And I NEVER saw that teamwork thing you keep hearing about. Our server would take a drink order, forget it, come back with them te minutes later, then take the order which would inevitably come with the wrong side, etc. Most of the servers were not starving college students but ummm…people… riding the Marta to get to a nicer part of town and do their lazy job (I think you know what I mean). J. Alexanders is in Alpharetta and has great food and is more upscale. The blogwriter is wrong…the parent company of J. Alexanders far pre-dates the first restaurant in the Hillstone group. And Houston’s started on the west coast while J. Alexander’s began on the east. The ribs at J. Alexanders far exceed those at Houston’s and so does the service.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I can’t wait for J. Alexanders to open there, it is going to blow that area of out the water. Just wait, in my opinioin J. Alexanders is going to really spice up that entire shopping center and draw a lot more people to that side of Ashford-Dunwoody road. I’ve been going to the J. Alexanders in Norcross as a regular for years, its a really nice upscale place and if this one is anything like the one there it’ll be a huge hit.
See ya there.