Il Fornaio

Infobox Company
name = Il Fornaio

type = Private
genre = Chain restaurant
foundation = 1972
founder = Larry Mindel (founded restaurant concept in 1986)
location_city = Corte Madera, California
location_country = United States
location =
locations =
area_served = United States
key_people =
industry = Food and beverage
products = bread
services = fine dining restaurant
revenue = $120 million (2000)
operating_income =
net_income =
owner =
num_employees =
parent =
divisions =
subsid =
slogan =
homepage = http://www.ilfornaio.com
footnotes =
intl =

Il Fornaio is a nationwide chain of twenty (as of 2008) Italian-themed fine dining restaurants.

History

The Il Fornaio brand was established in 1972 as a baking school in Barlassina, Italy (in the Lombardia region). It opened a retail bakery in Milan in 1975, and was licensed in 1981 to Williams-Sonoma as a retail bakery concept. Williams-Sonoma opened four locations in California before selling the business to private investors in 1983. Initially unsuccessful, the chain was re-sold in 1986 to Larry Mindel, who had run local restaurant holding company Spectrum Foods and launched or bought a series of successful restaurants: Chianti in Los Angeles; Prego (one of the originators of California-style pizza), MacArthur Park, and Ciao in San Francisco; and Guyamas in Tiburon.cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/04/FD123936.DTL&hw=INSIDE+SCOOP&sn=155&sc=439|publisher=San Francisco Chronicle|date=2002-12-04|title=Il Fornaio's Mindel looks to Sausalito for his dream|author=GraceAnn Walden|date=2002-12-04]

The new owners opened a total of 11 restaurant-bakeries in California in the 1980s and 1990s. The first restaurant location and headquarters are in Corte Madera, California, the second in San Francisco. They then branched out to Las Vegas, Nevada, Colorado, and Virginia.cite web|url=http://www.ilfornaio.com/page20.htm|publisher=Il Fornaio|title=Our Story]

In 1997 the company became publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. By 2000 the company had $124 million annual revenues. The company was eventually taken private again in a leveraged buyout. Mindel sold most of his equity and retired from daily operations of the group in 2001 (his son, Michael, continued and was Vice President of Marketing as of 2008), and in 2003 opened Poggio at the Casa Madrona Hotel in Sausalito as a personal project. [Cite news|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3190/is_14_37/ai_100074797|publisher=Nations Restaurant News|title=Industry veteran Mindel adds Italian concept Poggio to resume|date=2003-04-07|author=Alan J. Liddle] Headquarters is in Corte Madera, California.

Under its Executive Chef Maurizio Mazzon, the company launched a second concept, Canaletto Ristorante Veneto, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas in 1999, with a second location in 2008 in Fashion Island shopping mall in Newport Beach, California. [cite news|url=http://www.dailypilot.com/articles/2007/11/10/business/dpt-canaletto10.txt|publisher=Daily Pilot|title=Fashion Island to open exclusive Italian restaurant|date=2007-11-09]

Description

Each restaurant features a bakery that makes its own bread. There is a "core" menu dictated by the restaurant headquarters, plus signature dishes and specials at the discretion of each chef. [cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/10/11/DD22156.DTL|publisher=San Francisco Chronicle|title=Fornaio service can't match food|author=Kim Severson|date=2002-10-11] In addition, the group markets sourdough and other bread to supermarkets throughout California.

Overall, the company caters mostly to repeat guests and does not market extensively. Regular customers average 12.7 return visits per year, considered very high in the industry. The company is known for its long-running "passport" loyalty program promotion cite news|url=http://www.chainleader.com/article/CA6571588.html|publisher=Chain Leader|title=Il Fornaio Promotes a Passport to Italy|author=Margaret Littman|date=2008-07-01] Two weeks out of every month the restaurants promote dishes from a rotating schedule of Italy's 20 food regions with a special insert. The 10,000 promotion members receive a "passport stamp" from that region if they order one of the items, and those who collect all twenty stamps receive gifts and sweepstakes entries. As an unintended benefit, the promotion became a vehicle for recruiting cooks and chefs, after tourism offices in Italy noticed the promotion and established relationships with the company.

External links

* [http://www.ilfornaio.com ilfornaio.com] - official website

References