Skift Take
Running successful restaurants in Los Angeles for decades is a feat on its own, but running food and beverage at an 18,000-person venue takes something special.
There’s no one way to build a restaurant empire. Some restaurateurs create a family of unique entities that fill gaps across one city landscape. Others hit on a fast-casual idea that’s easily replicated across the country. For longtime business partners chef Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne it was a little bit of both. But then they added an 18,000-person venue to the list.
Under the Lucques Group umbrella, the two oversee three acclaimed restaurants in Los Angeles — Lucques, their first, which turns 20 this year, A.O.C. and Tavern — plus three casual Larder cafes that offer counter service and a strong grab-and-go component, a full-scale catering arm, and a wholesale bakery business. So when they were approached to take over the food and beverage operations at the iconic Hollywood Bowl for 2016, they had reservations.
It meant creating food and beverage programs for the various venues throughout — three full-service, sit-down concepts, three marketplaces, standalone kiosks, in-seat service and catering — from May through October. Experiences that go way beyond the typical concession-stand fare.
“Our first thought was wow that’s exciting,” said Goin. “The second was how would we do it? The funny thing is it falls in line. We just looked at everything from the perspective of our restaurants and broke it all down.”
[caption id="attachment_3530" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Caroline Stynes and Suza
