Celebrity Chefs Rule TV, But Can’t Make It In The Big Cities

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Celebrity chefs have found great success on the Food Network, daytime talk shows and with cookbooks and product endorsements. And yes, a few have well-respected and commercially successful restaurants.

But for some, keeping a New York City restaurant open seems impossible.

Photo by Roman Arkhipov on Unsplash

Chew On Carla’s Chicken Catastrophe

Carla Hall grew to fame as a caterer who charmed audiences in season five of Top Chef and is now a co-host of ABC’s daytime cooking and talk show mashup, The Chew. In 2016, she brought her southern charm to Brooklyn with her own restaurant, Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen. It closed after about one year. The reasons for this quick closure? According to Hall, she miscalculated her brand strength and chose the wrong location.

Another celebrity chef, Food Network’s Cat Cora, also unsuccessfully tried to set up a New York City southern eatery. Her FatBird restaurant opened and closed within seven months in 2017. The verdict seems to be mediocre food and a “hillbilly” chic that flew past (or under) diners in its trendy MeatPacking District location.

Hall and Cora both may have chosen the wrong locations for their eateries, but the biggest 2017 restaurant closure happened in the most prime restaurant real estate in the world.

 

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Guy’s Big Bite Of The Apple

Food Network star Guy Fieri’s larger than life personality seemed a perfect fit for bombastic Times Square. And by all accounts, his Guy’s American Kitchen Bar was a success, bringing in $17 million a year. There’s no official word on why Guy’s NYC restaurant was shuttered, but Times Square’s stratospheric rent and relatively low per-table checks for touristy spots must have contributed.

Food Personality Flops Aren’t A New Thing

Some celebrity food stars fizzled out years ago, even when the celebrity chef concept was novel. Rocco DiSpirito, rising star in the 1990’s New York fine dining scene, was swept up in the early 2000’s reality TV bubble.  His failure was documented in NBC’s The Restaurant. DiSpirito’s crash was chalked up to problems with his business partner, but many saw the chef making a choice to be a celebrity and not a chef.

So, what clues can celebrity chefs take from these failures? Choose a location that melds with your audience, try to retain your chef-cred and, above all, cook good food!