Besos de Mezcal

[Urbanized]

Tamashii very, VERY visible from Hudson, which while as I mentioned with Ludivine Hudson isn’t quite as high-volume as the other streets mentioned, it probably has a vehicular traffic count in the dozens of times higher than Second and probably literally a hundred or hundreds of times more than the street Besos is on. Speakeasy has the same relationship with Western, and 51st is a high-volume cut-through between Classen traffic circle and Western.

Both places see tremendously higher views from passing cars than does Besos.

I’m not claiming traffic count is the ONLY factor - The Wedge Deep Deuce is another rare example of a place that has survived an out-of-the-way spot - just saying that it is a SIGNIFICANT factor. In the Wedge’s case it helps that it already had a following on Western, arrived in downtown well before most other places, and that it has a larger restaurant family to prop it up when slow. Nearby Skinny Slim’s is another, but again, part of a larger chain, also uniquely visible from Walnut Bridge AND they have done an amazing job of tapping into a loyal subculture (soccer fans).

[PaddyShack]

Love me some Skinny's! Another one that is off a major street is Hall's Pizza Kitchen, they do well simply because of their food truck operation and the publicity of the owner.

[Teo9969]

The advantage of having a good location is simply not debatable for a restaurant.

That being said - finding your niche is more important than it has ever been. Niches can come from ambiance, location, drinks, foods, beer/wine selection, regulars, views, entertainment. There are so many different possibilities to use, but you have to quickly identify it and run with it. The difference between places like Deep Deuce and the WSKY corner across the street (I imagine in addition to rent prices) is that the old places had time to find their niche and grab a certain market. Anything that has opened in the last 3/4 years not only has had to find their niche quick, they've also had to deliver in multiple other categories just to even get a long look. You have to hit a good average in several of the above listed criteria along with being an "it" place for something.

Another thing that has hurt Deep Deuce restaurants was the lack of anything at Maywood I and the snails pace of everything else in the area - Maywood II still working on restaurant space FIVE years after being announced. And with several other major lots not getting developed, Deep Deuce has neither the entertainment draw nor the body count to keep up with everything. Need the lots on Perry/1st, 3rd/Central, 3rd/Walnut to be built out and I think we'll see that corner at 2nd/Central see more success. The Steelyard is also going to help.

[GoldFire]

Well that didn't last long. I live 1.5 blocks away and never ended up making it there. I would just simply forget it was there even though we go to DD Grill and Wedge quite frequently.

[Urbanized]

^^^^^^^^^
Exactly. “...Would just simply forget it was there...” or in other words rarely if ever drove past to be reminded of its existence.

Other than The Wedge Deep Deuce, Hall’s Pizza Kitchen is about the best example of an exception to my heavily-traveled thoroughfare theory, and as mentioned they had a massive food truck following (one of very few excellent and reliable trucks in OKC), the brick and mortar has an unusually great rooftop, pizza options are surprisingly lacking in downtown/Midtown, and even though it is tucked out of the way it STILL is in very close and connected proximity to other very popular places, which sit at one of the busiest intersections in downtown. Connected to Barrios and Capitals and adjacent to R&J. In some ways its location is a strength.

[OkiePoke]

I went there one time. It seemed like a dive bar. It was loud, kind of trashy, and I'm pretty sure one of the employees was drinking. I'm not surprised it closed.

[BridgeBurner]

I miss Slaughter's, never made it to this place

[shawnw]

Bring back slaughter's!!!

[David]

I miss the Slaughter's Hall mac and cheese dishes.

[Ginkasa]

Its not coming back, but I just want to jump on the support for Slaughter's Hall. With all the new stuff coming out and how rarely (comparatively to some people on here) I eat I didn't make it out there often, but it was definitely a placed I enjoyed the couple times I went and would have gone a few more times. I tried Besos de Mezcal and didn't feel like there was anything here I couldn't get somewhere else that would be just as good or better.

[Easy180]

Not surprised. As a fan of Slaughter’s I winced and rolled my eyes when they unveiled this concept. Thought no way that makes it there if Slaughter’s couldn’t.

[Pete]

The problem was that people had stopped going to Slaughter's. As much as many claimed to have liked it, I went quite a bit and it was dying on the vine.

Just goes to show that if you don't patronize something you can't be surprised when it's gone.

[Ginkasa]

I think that maybe ties back to something you had said previously in the Urban Johnnie's thread regarding you can't always make it to every place you think deserves business even if you eat out every night. You add in this location's lack of visibility and its a deadly combination.

[Teo9969]

Also, people don't know what Mezcal is.

[ctchandler]

I miss Slaughter's, never made it to this place

I loved Slaughter's, I just didn't go there often enough.
C. T.

[Easy180]

The problem was that people had stopped going to Slaughter's. As much as many claimed to have liked it, I went quite a bit and it was dying on the vine.

Just goes to show that if you don't patronize something you can't be surprised when it's gone.

You have to be really good to thrive outside of Midtown these days.

[PhiAlpha]

You have to be really good to thrive outside of Midtown these days.

Really, you can add the Plaza, Paseo, and Uptown to that.

[Anonymous.]

I spoke to someone involved with this business over the weekend and the consensus is that commercial rent is way too high in DD with I guess a 2 year? contract required.

[stile99]

I spoke to someone involved with this business over the weekend and the consensus is that commercial rent is way too high in DD with I guess a 2 year? contract required.

This is a song I've been singing for awhile now. When a store fails, Amazon did it. Of course, before we had Amazon to kick around, it was Walmart. Before Walmart there were others, and so on. But when a restaurant fails, it's a big mystery. Changing tastes, changing times, people not eating out as much, people eating out even more but oversaturation of that particular type of cuisine, who knows?

Seems nobody can understand it's sometimes the landlord's fault in both cases, so the real issue never gets addressed. The food truck fad started for a reason.

[CS_Mike]

I enjoyed the food that I had at Slaughter's, but the service sucked both times that I went. Extremely inattentive staff on both occasions, which was particularly bad because there were very few other diners there during those times. I recall seeing other similar complaints about the service as well. Maybe ownership struggled with the "service" component of a restaurant, and that contributed to the failures.

[checkthat]

I enjoyed the food that I had at Slaughter's, but the service sucked both times that I went. Extremely inattentive staff on both occasions, which was particularly bad because there were very few other diners there during those times. I recall seeing other similar complaints about the service as well. Maybe ownership struggled with the "service" component of a restaurant, and that contributed to the failures.

So much this. The food was awesome at Slaughter's but the service was pretty terrible. The bartenders seemed more interested in taking shots and flirting than taking care of patrons. After a few such instances, we were so turned off we never went back for Besos.

[HOT ROD]

Sorry to back up a bit but I wanted to respond to DC Sooner's comment.

OKC is rapidly reaching critical mass of residents in the downtown districts and likely has more residents than Memphis in the inner core. While OKC isn't a tourist city Memphis isn't really either; basically it's Elvis right? I'd argue that Bricktown is a bit more successful than Beal Street and OKC has more than just B-Town whereas I didn't see Memphis having anything else. I'm not here to drag down Memphis but I did want to make a point based on peer cities, OKC has indeed come a long way and IF people give it a chance you'll see that while its downtown isn't as aged/gritty as others it does have critical mass and is rapidly getting more as districts continue to mature.

And as has been mentioned, maturity of a city causes the competition as new concepts open and there will be closures. I don't see that as a failure of OKC at all but instead just how a city operates. OKC has the mass to patronize what we have and then some; remember OKC is surrounded by suburbs and is the only big city within 200 miles to the south and 400 to the north - a huge draw that Urbanized can probably attest delivers steady tourists. Combine that with downtown having more than just Bricktown and we do have an urban city worth a shot. Is it LA, no but I was just there last month and aside from LA Live they don't really have any edge on OKC downtown wise at the moment that I saw.

[Urbanized]

...OKC is surrounded by suburbs and is the only big city within 200 miles to the south and 400 to the north - a huge draw that Urbanized can probably attest delivers steady tourists...

Just a few days ago I looked at my website conversion analytics for a recent period, and my top ten cities for online sales are:

1. Dallas
2. Oklahoma City
3. Saint Louis
4. Kansas City
5. Tulsa
6. Houston
7. Austin
8. Chicago
9. Norman
10. Edmond

Dallas accounted for 25% of my online bookings. OKC also was roughly 25%, BUT those purchases included people from elsewhere who bought online while in OKC (meaning more than a few of those were also Dallas). The rest of the cities from 3-10 ranged from 3.69% to 1.17%, respectively.

Anecdotally we believe roughly 10% of our business is actually from the metro - and I don't see anything in that report that convinces me otherwise - but should know more in the future as we start to deep-dive more with the wealth of data captured by our new ticketing system. I need to point out that we are an anomaly; we are admittedly the most touristy thing in admittedly the most touristy part of OKC and downtown (though Adventure District gives us a run for the money there).

We watch the district very closely, and I the overall mix is probably still more than 50% metro-based business (my guess would be 60/40) over the course of the year, factoring all days and times. I would guess other downtown districts range from 70-30 to 80-20 metro vs out of metro. What is interesting is that most of the operators don't know this themselves, and most of the public is painfully unaware of how much impact visitor business has on the local economy or in keeping alive the places and things they love. I hear people all of the time spit out the word "tourists" like it is a negative, but you would be SHOCKED at how much visitor business exists in hyper-local darling districts like Plaza or Uptown. Guess what? Those places are in the CVB visitors' guides too. They are a major focal point of campaigns such as you will find in places like of www.visitokc.com .

And visitors (and their dollars) keep these local places alive. Anyone who thinks a place can survive long-term by only being patronized by hyperlocals is either nuts or terribly uninformed. Many businesses are now beginning to understand this, fortunately. I've had great conversations with the owners of places like Plenty and Shop Good in Automobile Alley, and once they started paying attention to zip codes they were shocked by what a huge role visitors play in their bottom line. I don't want to violate any confidences, but I can tell you for a fact that the Holiday Pop-Ups does way more business with people outside of "the bubble," much of it WAY outside.

So it is super important for businesses who aren't surrounded by tons of affluent housing (read downtown, as opposed to...say...Edmond) read the tea leaves and understand who their customer is, and cater to them. I definitely feel I have lots of growth potential with locals, and my marketing plan for next year reflects this. But it won't be via television or radio or local print. I have to connect with locals via social media, special events, special product, packaging with other businesses, better web visibility, and other non-traditional marketing.

I'm not running the type of business that can afford big ad buys anyway, but if I did, I promise you there is only one city I'd be looking at based on my most recent info. And it wouldn't be OKC. Or Tulsa. In fact if I were MADE of money I'd be doing ad buys in places like KC, St Louis, Houston, Austin before I'd be doing them in OKC or Tulsa.

Just in case anyone is still wondering why they see ads for Riversport when they are in Dallas.

[Urbanized]

By the way, it is interesting that Memphis was mentioned. This is not to pick on Memphis at all, but an experience I had there illustrates how pretty much all locals view the stuff in their own back yard.

A few years ago I used to go to a travel show in Little Rock every year, where I would pitch OKC as a destination for people planning bank travel, senior travel, etc.. The people you see on motor coaches. I actually like Little Rock quite a bit, but since I had been there several times and had never been to Memphis (and was driving) I decided to leave early the day before my event, drive PAST Little Rock to Memphis, spend the night at the Peabody and do the Memphis thing. I toured Graceland (of course), peered into the windows of the Memphis Recording Studio/Sun Records (I went back another time and toured it, and really recommend the place), walked around Beale Street, stumbled onto a Grizzlies-Bulls preseason game, bought a ticket, went sat by myself and had a blast, and then ended up back on Beale before wandering into a Flying Saucer (sortof a German-ish chain version of McNellie's).

I sat down at the bar, and as bartenders often do, the guy struck up a conversation with me. Asked where I was from, what I was doing in town, what I had done while I was there. The level of rolleyes when I mentioned Graceland was epic. And basically he didn't even try to hide his disapproval of my choices. I get it. He'd been there on a school trip while growing up I'm sure, been there done that, and EVERYBODY does it, and honestly Memphis has other interesting stuff worth checking out (Civil Rights Museum for starters). But the whole time I was thinking what a dummy this guy was. Maybe Graceland wasn't interesting to him, but it damn sure was to me. And in fact, if it wasn't there I probably would not have made the extra drive. So there I was, sitting in his bar, eating dinner and drinking beer, and eventually tipping him (though not nearly so much as I might have) and he was insulting my choices. Graceland is legitimately a top 15 or so attraction in the U.S.. And it brought him business every day. And, by the way, his employers had figured out how to capture my business (though they needed to better train their employees so as to keep business like mine).

I looked around when I walked out the door, and I certainly didn't see people walking into the Flying Saucer from the nearby upscale neighborhoods. Because there ARE NONE. I saw visitors. On foot. Spending money. Keeping the whole thing going.

It's not just Memphis, it's every city. The director of the OKC CVB likes to tell a story about a conference he attended in Boston a few years ago, and they had a free weekend night and were trying to decide what to do. A Boston local in with their group piped up and said "ehhh...we really need to take a train to [insert name of town that's not Boston]... ...there's nothing to do here in Boston." Now, have any of you here on OKCTalk ever BEEN to Boston? That is one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard. Yet, it's probably said all of the time... ...by people from Boston.

My point being, we all need to be careful about thumbing our nose at that business. And the downtown and funky urban places we love also need to learn how to capture at least a bit of that business as it falls off of the tree around them. It's a much bigger piece of the pie than people believe.

[stile99]

This is what I was saying a few months back when one of the proposed solutions to education was the insanely stupid additional $5/night hotel tax. We've been crapping on education in this state for years, that's a given, but the solution is not to crap on tourism. The average person simply has no idea how much money this brings into the state, not just directly at the hotels, but the overflow business. While five bucks a night might seem reasonable, tourism is fickle, as the fairgrounds learned when they thought they would start charging for parking and immediately lost long-term clients. People think that the five dollars would bring in millions, but on the other hand it could very well cost millions as well.