Restaurant Marketing and Management: The Secret Is in the Sauce

Dikran

Part 1:

The Story of Zankou

Chapter 1:

The Origin Story

Can you write the story of your business on one page? It’s difficult to condense and simplify all the best parts of your story onto just one page. The truth is that people love origin stories, and the reason why is quite simple: people are interested to know how success is possible despite tremendous odds.

They want to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The logic is this: if other people have done it, then they can, too. I wrote this origin story for Zankou Chicken, and now it’s proudly displayed inside the current edition of all our menus.

Here it is:

Born in Beirut

In 1962, Vartkes Iskenderian decided to open a small restaurant called Zankou on a street corner in Beirut, Lebanon. The only thing on the menu was rotisserie chicken. Our family soon introduced our signature garlic sauce, and it wasn’t long before Zankou became a household name.

Los Angeles Expansion

We opened in the heart of America’s motion picture industry in 1984.

Mardiros, the son of Vartkes, expanded the menu to include tri-tip shawerma, chicken Tarna®, and falafel. Then, in 1992, Mardiros opened a second location in Glendale, California. The restaurant was successful from opening day, and that inspired him to expand to Van Nuys, Anaheim, and Pasadena.

Establishing Precedent

In 2005, we opened our flagship restaurant in Burbank, close to the Warner Brothers and Walt Disney Studios, with a brand-new look. That restaurant elevated Zankou’s interior design to match the quality of our food. Consequently, our guests were treated to European, hand-laid stones, a hand-painted mural on the ceiling of an olive tree, and a beautiful stained-glass dome above the outdoor patio.

West Hollywood Bound

In 2012, we opened in West Hollywood, at the corner of Sunset and Fairfax, a few short blocks away from the world-famous Sunset Strip. Catering to the eclectic Hollywood crowd, this newest location serves Hollywood Hills, Laurel Canyon, and the Beverly Hills communities.

The Tradition Continues

Our goal is to continuously improve our guests’ experience. Thanks to their feedback, we expanded our menu with flame-broiled kabobs, steamed basmati rice, and our new falafel recipe. If you have suggestions, please let us know! We are here to serve you.

This is over 60 years of history in five paragraphs, but you get the picture. When you write your own history, it’s important to frame your story as if it were a legend; it should sound like a fairy-tale to all the people that hold your brand near and dear to their hearts. Think about what you would want to include and what you would rather leave out. Over time, this story will become urban legend in the thoughts and hearts of your most loyal customers. The next chapter delves a little deeper into our history and how Zankou became what it is today.

Chapter 2:

Interview with ‘Mom’, AKA Rita Iskenderian

Rita Iskenderian, president of Zankou Chicken, knew next to nothing about the ins and outs of her family business empire when her husband Mardiros suddenly died in 2003. With four sons who were too young to shoulder the responsibilities that their highly creative and entrepreneurial father had almost single-handedly shouldered, Rita found herself thrust into the day-to-day affairs of her small but vibrant chain of restaurants in the Los Angeles area. Rita soon found herself working 14 hours a day, seven days a week. How she managed is an inspiring story of mind over matter—of persistence over frailty—together with the realization that struggles and sacrifices have always been the bedrock of her family business.

Our employees love you. They approach you and love to see you. What is it about you that makes employees love you so much? What’s the secret to having that kind of relationship with employees?

I think the employees have such a relationship with me because I love them and I respect them a lot. That’s why they love me and respect me. They are the reason I am here. They are the reason this business can grow. I always respect what they do. I want to help each one of them. I want to be there for them and do whatever I can to make them more comfortable—to give them as many benefits as possible. I love my employees.

A lot of people are interested to know the origin of Zankou and how we came here from Lebanon. What was it that helped us succeed? While many immigrant family businesses make it, a lot of immigrant family businesses fail. They try to open a restaurant, but it doesn’t work.

It’s the persistence to keep working hard. Sometimes you don’t make any profit. Instead, you must invest your own money into the business. We didn’t make any profit for the first three or four years.

In fact, on opening day in Lebanon, we sold only one chicken. The second day, we sold two. But we persisted. On our first day in Hollywood, your dad was so busy that his feet got swollen from standing up. At the end of the day, he had to walk with the help of two people, but it was one of the happiest days of his life.

You didn’t make any money, but everyone kept putting money in so that the business would survive?

Yes.

People don’t know that. They think we succeeded right away. When the Hollywood Zankou opened in 1984, it was very busy.

Yes. It was very busy, but then slowly it [the number of customers] went down. We had to struggle to make things better.

That’s very interesting. People don’t know that.

Yes. I was a work-at-home mom, but your father and your grandparents struggled a lot. They were stressed a lot. They weren’t making any profit. At one point, your father had to let employees go.

Dad was preparing the food himself; I remember that.

Yes. He was the cashier, the cook—he was the one carving the meats.

He said he didn’t have time for a bathroom break.

Yes. To go back to your question, when people keep losing profits, it’s very hard to keep going; they close the business. But we believed in what we were doing, so we kept struggling and slowly—very slowly—the business caught up. We put different items on the menu. Seven years after our first store in Hollywood, we opened in Glendale in 1991.

You have a great palate, and since you know a lot about food, you cook a variety of dishes. How does one build on that tradition and make it succeed on the restaurant level?

I was not the one who put all the ingredients together—it was your father. He had a better palate than me. He was great at that. He changed the menu all the time; he changed the ingredients.

He kept changing the ingredients until they got to what they are today.

Yes. I’m not the one who put those ingredients together. I added the tabbouleh to the menu—it was my idea. I added the ingredients. I also added the rice and some ingredients to the kebabs. The rest was entirely your father’s doing.

Dad was constantly making the dishes better?

Yes. But to make things better and better, you must use the best ingredients.

For example, you can’t use low-quality garlic. You must use the highest quality garlic and the finest meats. Customers are not stupid; cheap ingredients do not fool them. They will taste the food and go somewhere else. To keep customers, you must use the best ingredients and be consistent in the way you prepare your food.

A greedy person can’t be a successful restaurant owner; you must be generous. If a dish goes bad, you throw the whole thing out and start fresh. If you suspect that the meat or chicken tastes just a little different than it should, you must throw it away. You lose profit, of course, but it’s worth it because if your food is fresh and has high-quality ingredients, you will sell more. The profit will come from the volume of sales. That’s our secret—our profit margins are small, but we sell a lot.

What aspect of our father do you want people to remember most?

He was a very generous, giving person. He had a heart of gold. He gave to Armenian schools and churches, and he gave without making his contributions public; he didn’t want people to know. If you compare his earnings to what he gave, nobody we know gave as much as he gave to the community. In fact, as soon as people found out that he was a giving person, more of them came to ask him for donations.

All the writers and singers—different trades of people started to come every day, and he just kept on giving more and more. At one point, he said he couldn’t go to the store because people were coming and asking for money all the time. He said, It’s better for me to sit at the house because I can’t say no. He couldn’t say no to anybody. He gave everything he had. I have never seen a more generous person in my life. That’s how I want people to remember him. He was very smart and very giving.

After we got married, during our first Christmas together, he told me, I’m going to take you somewhere. We were in Lebanon back then. He took me house by house, knocked on the doors of people I didn’t know, and gave them money. That was our first Christmas as husband and wife. The whole evening, we went from house to house, giving people money. He had a heart of gold—maybe diamond.

Even before he opened the Glendale store, we used to go downtown on Christmas Day and give money to the homeless—from the car. Our Christmas was like that. We did that two or three times, then I got scared, because the people hung onto the moving car and put their hands inside.

You’re a very persevering person. How did you overcome a lot of difficult circumstances both in business and in life? Our house caught on fire, business went up and down—I can’t even name all the tough situations.

My husband taught me to be strong. Whatever happens in life, he said, you have to be strong. God forbid, even if you lose one of your sons, he would say to me, you still have to be strong. Because only the strong survive in this life.

He used to say you couldn’t be weak in life; otherwise people will walk all over you.

Yes. That’s why I’ve become a stronger person. Look at Armenian people in general: they survived the Armenian Genocide and look where they are now. We have that instinct to survive—and thrive—in our blood. Most Armenians are hard-working people.

Armenia is famous for its mountains. One artist who once visited the country said that no other place has mountains of such striking colors and textures, and he compared Armenia’s mountains to its people: Armenians are as strong and hard as the mountains in their motherland. Do you agree?

Yes, but look at it this way: All over the world, when the parents pass away, they leave their belongings to their children. Armenians were massacred so heavily during the Armenian Genocide that they lost everything. Even those who survived couldn’t leave anything to their children. They had to work hard; they started from zero—so it was not that their strength came from hundreds of years of history. They had to persevere, and they had a dream of succeeding. That’s the difference between Armenians and people of other countries, as I see it.

One other country that has been through a lot and whose people are famously tough are Koreans, and the two things that Armenians and Koreans seem to have in common are the emphases on family and food. Food is a big part of Korean culture, as it is among Armenians. Where, in Armenian culture, despite all of Armenia’s historical crises, do you think that emphasis on food comes from?

The emphasis on family, I think, comes from the fact that Armenians were separated from each other over much of recent history—in the late 1800s during the Sultan Abdul Hamid Massacres of 1894–1896 when over 300,000 were killed, and then again from 1915–1922, the years of the Armenian Genocide when over 1.5 million were killed by the Ottoman Turkish government. The family was an institution that became almost worshipped, and it became a source of strength because Armenians wanted to keep their families together. The brutality of the genocide prompted Armenians to develop stronger bonds with each other and within their families.

My husband’s maternal grandmother, Hnazant Torosian, survived the Armenian Genocide and was living with us. She lost her younger brother in the genocide, and she never stopped dreaming about him. She believed he was in another country. She never saw him again, but her bond with him and other members of her immediate family were strong.

Do family and food also have a bond in Armenian culture?

Yes. When family members get together, what else are they going to do? They’re going to eat! Just the other day, for example, I wanted to see the mother of my bride Alies [Dikran’s wife, expectant at the time with their first child], so I decided to cook. Food brings people together.

Name a few Armenian dishes.

Sarma—or dolma—grape leaves. There are also some traditional foods that Armenians brought with them. Each village in Western Armenia (modern-day Turkey) had its own food—or a typical dish. For example, your father was from Hadjin, which had its own specialty food, such as jidabour. Hadjin is in Turkey now—it was one of the villages that Turkey took from the Armenians. My family was from Aintab, which also had its own dishes. For example, we made an eggplant dolma. Other villages had a couscous dish cooked with tomato and lemon, without meat.

When Armenians went to other countries, such as Lebanon and Syria, they took these culinary traditions with them—and there, they began making dishes from other villages as well, because they were next to each other. So, Armenians began cooking tabbouleh, which is a Lebanese dish, or shawerma, which is an Arabic dish. But nobody would cook a dish better than the people to whom it was native. People from Aintab, for example, cooked the best dolma. And nobody could cook jidabour better than the people from Hadjin. It’s a meat-and-grain stew that must be cooked for hours in order for its consistency to be right.

Was your mother a good cook?

Yes—but my mother-in-law was a better cook. They had different ways of cooking. When I got married, I didn’t know anything about cooking. Afterward, I learned everything about cooking from my mother and my mother-in-law. I mixed their methods and came up with my own!

Which business owners do you admire?

The restaurant industry is a very difficult business to be in. I admire all the people who, without franchising, have made it to the top. I can name a couple, such as In-N-Out Burger and Panda Express. Panda Express started at the same time as us, in 1984. They have over 1,800 restaurants and are in a better position today than we are. I want to be like them one day, but without franchising—I don’t like the concept of franchising.

When you took charge of Zankou Chicken after your husband passed away, what did you find in the first few days or weeks?

When you and your brothers came to me and said, Mom, you have to work, my reaction was, Oh, wow, until now I didn’t have to work, and now that I lost my husband I have to work! I felt bad about that, and due to the funeral and all the people who were coming to pay their condolences, I couldn’t do anything for about 10 days.

Fortunately, my sister Hermine was there to help us out. She worked as the manager for our Pasadena and Van Nuys restaurants. I watched what she was doing. For two or three months, I watched while helping her. At that time, in 2003, we didn’t process credit card payments—the business was all cash. I used to count the money with my sister, and it was a lot of work because we had to count many bills and coins. When we made a mistake, we had to count the entire lot of money all over again.

And all the while, when I started working, I got to know our employees. Some of them needed financial assistance, so I would give them cash and they would return it little by little. I helped them in any way I could. I became friendly with them. Little by little, I opened up to them and they opened up to me—and that’s how the bond started between our employees and me.

With time, and with the advice and help of my sons, I changed the management system and made it more efficient so I didn’t have to go from store to store every day. But for 10 years, I didn’t go on vacation. My sons were free, but I was not free. The first time I left was when my brother Mano got sick in Germany. He had cancer, so I had to go and see him. And the second time I left was when he died; I went to his funeral.

Would you have preferred to continue living the way you always had—not involved in the business at all?

No.

Suddenly your life opened up to the rest of the world.

Yes. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t changed the system so I would still be going from store to store.

Who did you turn to for advice?

I asked my sons. I didn’t do anything without their participation. I didn’t act alone at all; but then again, the business teaches you things that you don’t know. When you are there every single day, you think of ways to do things better. Because you are there every day, you notice things nobody else notices. You also learn that where there is a will, there is a way.

What advice would you give to someone—another businesswoman, say—who is compelled to follow the same path that you did?

Value your business. You must really love what you’re doing—don’t go into a business if you don’t want it and don’t love it. Be persistent and give the best to your customers. If you give great value to your customers and value your business, your struggles will be rewarded one day.

There’s a saying in English: From rags to riches to rags in three generations. Your family business is now in its third generation and doing quite well. What advice would you give to the fourth generation?

Do what you love to do. Value the business you are in. Don’t take it for granted; and if you’re still in the family business, remember that your grandfathers and grandmothers struggled to make it succeed.

What are your top three words of advice for people reading this book?

Be strong. Eat healthy. Love people.

Chapter 3:

Which came first—Chicken or Garlic?

This chapter’s title is my own eccentric take on the familiar, ancient question, Which came first—the chicken or the egg? It seems obvious that the chicken would have come first, because God would have had no reason to start with an egg! Now that we’ve established the primacy of the chicken, let’s fast-forward several millennia to a historic region called the Fertile Crescent. This beautiful region stretches from northern Syria to the Nile Valley, where much of human history originated. Just southwest of war-torn Syria lies the beautiful city of Beirut, Lebanon. It was there, in 1962, in a tiny storefront devoid of tables and chairs, that Zankou Chicken was born.

Named after a river in Armenia, Zankou (pronounced Zaan-koo) was located in a Lebanese neighborhood called Bourj-Hammoud. Bourj is the Arabic word for bridge. The name of the town was of architectural origin, named after the famous bridges and roadways of the area. Over the years, the Zankou brand would evolve between the cradle of civilization and the mecca of capitalism that is America. Lebanon has always been known as the Paris of the Middle East, due to its eclectic food, fashion, and nightlife.

Zankou was born five years after the formation of the Beatles. During the period the boys from Liverpool took the United States by storm, as the Beatles were arguably charming the world with their first hit single, Love Me Do, my family began making the hit combination that would soon become almost as famous as the Beatles. (It’s a funny little fact, given that we once had the Fab Four hanging on the wall of our Glendale store.)

It was my grandma Margret who came up with the recipe for the garlic sauce. She had never been to Le Cordon Bleu or any other cooking school; she just had an amazing talent for cooking and making new recipes from scratch. In my opinion, she could have easily been likened to the artistic greats of the culinary world.

As a huge art buff, I greatly admire the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. The greatest artists and chefs didn’t attend formal education—life was their school. They worked meticulously on their craft every day, no matter where they were. That was my grandma. She made the best chikufte (raw meat mixed with bulgur and jalapenos), and everyone who tasted it would agree. She would cook and experiment with spices from morning until night, every single day, for more than 70 years. When she wasn’t cooking for thousands of customers at Zankou, she was preparing meals at my cousin’s house. She would roll sarma and dolma for family and friends alike, and accompany them with amazing side dishes, like garlic yogurt and spicy jalapeno salad. She was an amazing chef. She made this dish called arayis, which is essentially ground beef made with diced onions and tomatoes, stacked on pita bread and cooked in an oven. She made it so fresh and tasty; I remember one time I had about five of them in a row!

The Virtues of Garlic

One of the most ancient of foods, garlic (Allium sativum) is an essential ingredient in every major cuisine in the world. Who hasn’t marveled at the aroma of this condiment as it’s being sautéed in the frying pan or baked whole in the oven? Indeed, of all the vegetables that complement chicken, perhaps none is as wonderful as garlic.

At Zankou, we were the first to serve raw garlic sauce along with rotisserie chicken. This made the chicken both tasty and digestible—a practice that underscores a vital principle of postmodern cuisine: to be well assimilated, foods must stimulate the digestive juices through the pleasure of eating.

Garlic as Medicine

The Chinese word for garlic, suan, is represented by a single character, signifying that the condiment was widely known from the beginning of the evolution of the language, and not just as a food. Garlic has been used from antiquity worldwide in myriad ways to aid the human body. For example, it has been used to treat animal bites, especially snake bites. During World War I, soldiers used garlic as medicine, directly applied to damaged skin. Garlic was used as an antiseptic: crushed, raw garlic was applied to wounds and bound before the advent of creams and lotions. What’s more, garlic also has a legendary reputation in scaring away vampires—although this supernatural power is somewhat unbelievable, given garlic’s anticoagulant properties.

What’s certain is that garlic has more attraction than the power to destroy vampires and evil spirits. After all, it’s the world’s most commonly used condiment. Garlic has more flavor and aroma than just about any other plant, including onions. It is pungent and earthy, yet also subtle and delicate.

The Science Behind the Magic

Only in recent years has the scientific community begun to understand garlic’s healthful properties, namely its role in flushing out carcinogenic substances from the body. Garlic contains phytochemical compounds that are a proven defense against cancer, particularly for the prevention of cancers of the stomach, esophagus, prostate, colon, and breast. Garlic is especially effective in protecting against a class of carcinogenic chemicals known as nitrosamines, which interact with the body’s DNA. These are formed in the intestine from nitrites; a class of preservatives found in meat products such as sausages, bacon, and ham, as well as pickled foods. Garlic prevents the formation of nitrosamines by reducing the risk of cancer-causing genetic mutations.

Researchers have studied at least 20 compounds derived from garlic and found them to possess anticancer properties. Of these compounds, two—diallyl sulfide (DAS) and diallyl disulfide (DADS)—are fat-soluble and considered to be the principal compounds in garlic that play a role in preventing cancer. In fact, DAS has been shown to defuse the development of lung cancers caused by an exceedingly toxic nitrosamine called NNK, which results from the ingestion of nicotine.

However, to fully harness garlic’s anticancer properties, the condiment must be consumed raw and freshly crushed. That’s because anticancer molecules in allicin, the strong-smelling ingredient that gives garlic its pungent odor, are strongest when the condiment is crushed, chopped, or chewed. This is how we make it at Zankou.

In the very beginning at Zankou, we didn’t have garlic sauce. In fact, we sold raw chickens alongside our cooked ones for the first decade or so. Over time, customers fell in love with our garlic sauce, which raises the question: What makes garlic taste so great with chicken? Maybe the answer lies in the fact that both foods are exponentially healthy for the body when combined. After all, chicken is one of the leanest forms of animal protein—and what could be a more delicious way of eating it than with creamy garlic sauce?

Or perhaps it’s that the chicken is too dry by itself, and that the garlic sauce gives the meat that special, zesty kick required to render it as palatable as it is healthy. Perhaps it’s just the power and amazing taste of the raw garlic itself, and the chicken is just the vehicle by which the garlic must travel into our mouths. Sometimes our body craves that powerful garlic sauce because of its healing, nurturing, and protective properties.

At the end of the day, what wins people over is the taste: that amazing, fresh taste of the crispy skin on the chicken, the aroma of the chicken being cooked for hours in the oven, and that remarkable aftertaste that has the effect of leaving us hungrier with every bite. The hot chicken melts the garlic sauce, filling our mouths with a warm liquid sensation we will never forget.

Once you’ve had a bite, the taste of garlic and chicken remains with you. Your friends may avoid you because you smell of garlic, but in the end it’s your garlic-infused immune system that you’ll thank when everybody around you gets sick. Garlic contains a significant amount of the vitamins B-1, B-6, and C. According to the Linus Pauling Institute, garlic cloves contain 0.11 milligrams of vitamin B-6.

It’s not difficult to understand why we chose to add the garlic sauce to our repertoire. This leads us into the next part of this chapter, which explains how the concept of Zankou Chicken evolved over time.

Pioneering a New Brand

Zankou Chicken started out as a pioneering family business in the fast-casual restaurant sector. Zankou was founded by my grandfather at a single store in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1962. When my father grew up, he too worked in the family business and took it to the next level. They sold the store in 1981, a year before immigrating to Los Angeles. Upon arrival in the U.S., they couldn’t decide on a business concept. My grandfather proposed opening a dry-cleaning store, but the nauseating fumes typical of dry cleaning at the time put off my father. My dad, seeing that no one was serving hot, delicious, Middle-Eastern food at reasonable prices, convinced them that the market was much better suited for our restaurant than to start a new business from scratch. Then in 1984, the doors to our first American restaurant opened in Los Angeles—on the corner of Sunset and Normandie, in what is now the heart of Little Armenia.

Changing the Concept

The formula was changed when Zankou arrived in the United States. Back in Lebanon, they had only served chicken. Our family realized that we needed to add some variety to attract the American palate. The changes began when our now-famous garlic sauce was added to the mix, closely followed by Arabic bread; both of these had come with us from Lebanon. Over time, we added all of the other items such as shawerma, falafel, dolma, marinated beef, fried garbanzo dumplings now universally known as falafel, grape leaves, mutabbal, and tabbouleh. We also added hummus, which is a staple in Israel and across the Middle East. Since those days, hummus has also become a staple in America—you can buy it at any grocery store. It’s become so mainstream that Pepsi recently bought Sabra, a leading brand of hummus, making it available in most supermarkets. All of these additions to our menu were made in response to customer feedback received over time: tabbouleh, basmati rice, cucumber salad, chicken kabob, luleh kabob (which is ground beef), and tri-tip steak kabob, which we make with high quality meat. My dad always used to say the secret to delicious kabobs is the smoke that rises above the grill which gives it an amazing flavor, and we’ve done our best to keep that legacy alive. And just before the printing of this book we have added homemade baklava, based on a recipe my mom learned and perfected.

From our simple beginnings back in Lebanon, we slowly moved forward, steadily expanding our menu to suit our American customers. During the early days in the U.S., we had to educate people about the simplest things, such as what hummus and shawerma are—back then, they didn’t know. 1984 was a really eclectic time in L.A. There were a lot of starving artists. Hollywood was up and coming.

Fast-forward to now, and all of that action has moved to the Westside—West Hollywood, or Century City, which are more eclectic and vivacious. In fact, our newest location is in West Hollywood—on Sunset and Fairfax. Today, many actors, producers, and directors live in the area. The Directors’ Guild of America building is