Mr. Weinstein: Basically, we have historically operated freestanding units (restaurants), each with an individual trade name trying to fit into a particular market area. The change in the company obviously came when we moved out to Vegas with a whole series of restaurants in New York, fast food courts, room service, employee dining room and banquet business at the New York Hotel and Casino, which became a 40 million business for us. And then we also went to the Venetian and we have a little work that we do in Caesars. We basically came away from that experience with the thought, especially after 9/11, that the most reliable locations that we had were what we considered landmark locations where there is a significant footprint in a very important area where we are not prone to the dilution of our sales by immediate competition. So in Bryant Park, in New York, we are the only restaurant in a nine and a half acre park, as well as at Union Station in Washington, DC. While we do have some limited competition, demand seems to outstrip supply as it does in New York-New York Hotel and Casino. In Sequoia in Washington, DC, we have one of a very limited number of waterfront sites in Washington and we have the biggest footprint. It's a 1,000-seat restaurant. So those locations anchored by what we consider landmark status seem to hold up no matter what the competition is doing around us. And those earnings or cash flow from those properties are certainly more reliable than what we had been doing years ago. So we went on a program of trying to establish ourselves with only landmark locations and eliminating mostly by selling and in one case closing those locations which we do not think fit that parameter. And the result of that has been what I think is a far more reliable cash flow, as I said before, for the whole company. The basic balance sheet has also changed. Right after 9/11, between long-term debt and being overdrawn at the bank ' because at that juncture we were losing 1 million a week ' the bank didn't quite know how to handle us. We paid down debt from about a 27 million level in the last two years and several months to right now we're under 4 million and we will have sponged the debt certainly by the end of the June quarter. Probably somewhere around late April or May we will have no debt. And we have only looked at expansion properties with those that are considered landmark status. So, for instance, we just finished the Seminole Indian Casino in Tampa where we control all of the fast food. We are doing the same at another Seminole Indian Casino, which will open in late April in Hollywood, Florida. The Tampa experience has been extraordinary. We are doing substantial volumes there and we expect the same to be repeated in Hollywood. So we're not building as many locations as our balance sheet would allow us and we are not doing that because we being far more selective in the type of properties we want to build. We are also, for the first time as we did in Tampa and in Hollywood, building those locations through a limited partnership where we put up no money and get approximately 50% of the cash flow. And investors are putting up the money and hopefully getting very good returns on the investment that we think we can achieve. The criterion has become much harder in finding new location because we don't want to build with our own money. We want to build up cash and then come out of this thought process with an extraordinarily strong balance sheet. So we must find deals which are landmark status and also can hold investors' money and by that I mean investors must be able to get a good return. Otherwise, they're not going to invest with us in the future and the goal here is to have them invest with us in the future. So we have substantially limited the risk profile with the company by not putting up money and we've substantially curtailed the type of location that we're going to build in.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ARKR
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.

