Park Chow

Faced with a fiscal pinch, the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board has teamed with Phil Roberts’s (Parasole) consulting group Idein to fix the fast food at a handful of city parks. Why should the city spend your tax dollars to hire the guy responsible for creating Manny’s Steakhouse and Buca di Beppo to improve the greasy popcorn? Is this the harbinger of a crass commercialization of a beloved urban park system?

Well, kind of, but it’s the best news to come sailing down the food chain in years. Cities across the country have turned to private groups to operate food service in parks, with tremendous success. The Twin Cities are far behind the curve.

Warner LeRoy’s Tavern on the Green in New York City almost singlehandedly helped revive an ailing Central Park in the mid-1970s. San Diego’s Balboa Park offers some of the city’s best dining. In Chicago there’s the North Pond Cafe in Lincoln Park, salvaged from a historic storage building. Most recently, the Madison Square Park Conservancy teamed with the City of New York Parks Department to open Shake Shack, legendary restaurateur Danny Meyer’s high-caliber homage to homey fast food.

In Minneapolis, the 2004 debut of Tin Fish on the north end of Lake Calhoun proved that an independent operator with an upscale attitude and an eye toward quality could be successful, enhancing the quality of the urban space, and enriching the overall experience. Give the MPRB a thumbs-up (much of the credit goes to new parks czar Jon Gurban) for allowing local entrepreneurs to lease the space, giving the city a cut of the gross (around 10 percent).

When the MPRB operated the food kiosk where Tin Fish sits, it lost money. Tin Fish was a smash, grossing almost 450K last summer during an April to October run, though the wait for food was often comically long. There’s an old saying in the food biz, “the numbers don’t lie,” and the truth these numbers told was that this concept could be replicated in other city parks.

Idein was assigned the task of helping the city find operators for Lake Harriet, Wirth, Minnehaha, and Loring Parks. According to Roberts’s point man, Kip Clayton, the city would open one restaurant at each park, perhaps one every year over the next four.

Many of the parks, including Minnehaha, have existing structures that would be renovated by the operator; many have beer and wine licenses, as well as space for private functions and catering. Idein is also looking for operators for the boathouse complex the MPRB wants to build on Lake Calhoun's south shore.

Sea Salt will make its debut late this spring in Minnehaha Park with a fresh seafood menu similar to the one available at Tin Fish. It’s the brainchild of Jon Blood, currently a manager at Coastal Seafood, and his partner, Eric Hatting. In addition to the regular menu, Sea Salt will offer cooking classes as a unique way to increase its customer base and add muscle to the bottom line via a revenue stream to outlast warm weather.
This will be important to operators. Despite Tin Fish’s success, margins are thin at these venues. Check averages are teeny—about $10. The season is short and a few rainy weekends can blow your whole year. Clayton says that’s why it’s so important that potential operators “be able to execute a specialized high-quality niche food-service menu with a destiny independent of the parks, and the product needs to be fantastic.” That’s consultant speak for the best burger you can get your hands on, made by someone who carries culinary gravitas and can execute a plan.

Who might that be? Clayton says people like Manny Gonzalez of Manny’s Tortas, Dan Flanagan of Danny Boy’s Cheeseburgers, and developer Larry Abdo, who created My Burger, are examples of ideal operators. “As long as you are selective, it works and the experience is enriched,” Clayton says. “This will bring people to the parks.”

Three years ago, neighborhood outcry squashed a proposal for a Dairy Queen-esque spinoff at the Lake Harriet kiosk (the last misguided effort of a park bureaucracy out of touch with its community and clientele). With Tin Fish’s genie out of the bottle, it may be a battle royale to see who gets to grab the golden onion ring.