Restaurateur sees salad days ahead

All told, Melman estimates he's developed 130 restaurants and 70 or more different concepts since he and best friend Jerry Orzoff opened a funky burger joint in Chicago's upscale Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1971. Orzoff died in 1981.

R.J. Grunt's, a name memorializing their initials and the noise made by a girlfriend of Jerry's when she ate, captured the spirit of the hippie era, Melman recalled fondly. It featured tofu burgers and the macrobiotic meal of the day, served by waitresses who wrote political messages on customers' checks. Psychics came in to read fortunes, and the restaurant's slogan was “Catering to the neurotic compensation of eating.”

‘It was wild, and it was fun’
“We did wild stuff then,” said the restaurateur, who had stored up creative ideas working in his father's deli. “It was wild, and it was fun.”

Lettuce had five other restaurants by 1979 besides R.J. Grunt's, which remains in operation today. Melman then traveled through Europe and returned to open a steady flow of new restaurants covering all genres of dining, many featuring a theatrical environment.

A made-to-order creperie, flamenco dinner shows, one-bite desserts — all have been spawned from a bulging idea file Melman fills with scribbled notes, clipped-out articles and pictures, and ideas inspired by dinner conversations.

“If we go out to eat, I'll be paying attention to what you eat and how you eat it and what you say,” he said.

The 64-year-old Melman handed the CEO's role to protege Kevin Brown three years ago.

His legacy may be passed on through his three children, all of whom are involved in the business. R.J., 27, is general manager of R.J. Grunt's, the restaurant he was named after; Jerrod, 23, is a manager at the Lettuce restaurant Osteria Via Stato; and Molly, 21, a senior at the University of Michigan, is waitressing this summer at R.J. Grunt's.

‘Daydreamer of the company’
Now chairman and the self-described “daydreamer of the company,” Melman vows to never take it public or let it turn into a mega-chain on his watch. He still puts in a full week either brainstorming possible restaurant concepts in his office or working on new concoctions in the test kitchen 50 feet away.

“Everything I think of, I relate to restaurants,” he said. “If I'm in a hardware store, I'm in a movie, I relate it to restaurants.”

Not everything works. One colorful flop was a pizza restaurant in Las Vegas located near the entrance to a popular rollercoaster with a view of the city. But no one wanted to eat before riding for fear of getting sick, and no one felt like eating afterward, either.

“It was a dismal failure,” he said.

Lettuce clearly hasn't suffered much for such goofs. Today, the privately held company has annual sales of over $300 million and about 5,000 employees. Melman won't discuss its earnings but doesn't dispute a report that puts them at over $50 million.

The success partly reflects what consultant Paul says is the most successful frequent dining program in the industry, thanks to the variety of restaurants it offers.

Clark Wolf, a New York-based food and restaurant consultant, noted that Lettuce restaurants haven't always translated to success on the East and West coasts. He also said Melman has been more businessman than innovator in recent years, opening additional outlets of existing concepts or working with partners.

But few others, he said, have had such a knack over the years for picking up on trends before they became mainstream.

“He was and probably still is the first and best restaurant collection maven,” Wolf said. “He's someone who's had a strong influence and strong impact on the evolution of restaurants in America over the last 30 years.”

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