Article Excerpt:
TWST: Could we begin with a brief historical sketch of Ark Restaurants and a picture of things as they are now?Mr. Weinstein: The company went public approximately 20 years ago in December 1985. We had been operating the predecessor company as a private company, and we built the first restaurant in 1975. So we've been in business 30 years. We started out with small neighborhood restaurants on Manhattan's West Side as a first phase and later moved to larger restaurants. Small restaurants to us are anything from 100-125 seats; larger restaurants are 300 seats. Then we moved in the early 1990s to larger venues, the first being Union Station in Washington, DC, which in the one facility was about 700 seats, and then to Washington Harbor in Washington, DC, with an 1,100-seat restaurant that we opened in 1992. Then in 1996 we built a 1,000-seat restaurant in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library in New York City, and then in late 1997, 1998 we moved to the largest operation we have so far, which is doing 70% of the food and beverage service in Las Vegas' New York-New York Hotel & Casino. We operate three restaurants, nine fast-food court operations, room service, banquets and an employee dining room. That's a substantial operation. We have since added operations in The Venetian, Caesar's in Las Vegas, and two fast-food courts in Tampa and Hollywood, Florida, at the Seminole Indian Hard Rock Casinos. The business has been one that has expanded more toward larger attractions in which we're part of somebody else's concept, and most of that is casinos. There is also Bryant Park in New York City and Union Station in Washington, DC. Over the last six or seven years, we have for the most part divested ourselves of the neighborhood restaurants, the smaller restaurants. We still retain a couple. Even though they may have been profitable, the cash flow was rather insignificant in relation to the whole. We are really focused now on these large entertainment complexes and trying to find a way to fit into these venues with a whole scheme of food service, which includes fast food, restaurants, catering operations and room service if there's a hotel. That's primarily what we look at, and we are very selective. In addition, we have eliminated all long-term debt from the company. We pay our bills on average in 15 days, which is a very short time frame for the restaurant industry. We find that by doing so we get better quality and food costs. Our purveyors are interested in the short time frame of payment, so that helps us in our purchasing power. We now pay a dividend of $1.40 per share, and the primary focus is to try to increase EBITDA and aftertax cash flow and provide our shareholders with a larger dividend as time goes by.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ARKR
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