Margaritaville, the concept themed around a Jimmy Buffett song, is teaming up with a cruise line and also opening a new resort and timeshare in the coming year.
Margaritaville Enterprises LLC sold its restaurants to Brazil-based International Meal Co. last April, allowing the Orlando, Fla.-based company to focus on managing the brand, which includes a total of 33 restaurants and eight concepts.
Among its new ventures is a partnership with Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd., whose new ship, the Norwegian Escape, will set sail in 2015 with a Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville at Sea restaurant, as well as a 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar. The latter will specialize in Margaritas and “boat drinks” such as Bahama Mamas and rum Runners, and will also provide nightly musical entertainment.
Margaritaville is teaming up with Wyndham Worldwide to open a vacation ownership resort on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas. It is also opening its new flagship resort in Hollywood, Fla., that will have eight restaurants, including two new concepts: the upscale JWB Prime Steak and Seafood and a food truck called Floriday’s Food Trailer.
Meanwhile, Margaritaville restaurants have moved in line with current trends by streamlining and upgrading their menus.
For example, the Orlando, Fla., location now offers five burgers instead of six, and four sandwiches instead of seven. New items include a drunken shrimp skillet sautéed with tequila lime butter, roasted garlic, onions and peppers and served with a miniature baguette to dip in the sauce; and pretzel sticks with mustard sauce and queso. The sirloin and teriyaki sirloins have been replaced with a chimichurri flat iron steak and a New York strip, and the quesadillas have been upgraded from standard fare to choices such as chicken tinga, carne asada and pork carnitas.
Margaritaville chief executive John Cohlan went from being an operator to a brand manager with the company’s sale to IMC. He discussed those changes with Nation’s Restaurant News.
You’ve been Margaritaville’s CEO for a while.
For 17 years. Jimmy [Buffett] had a restaurant in Key West, [Fla.,] and a little place in New Orleans when I joined him. It all began as a song and essentially a state of mind, which we’ve expanded to a broad-based consumer brand [including a beer, LandShark Lager, packaged food and beverages, and partnerships with airports and cruise lines].
We want to create a quality experience where people can have fun, often with food and beverage, and find an escape from their daily lives. When people ask what business we’re in, in the most broad-based way we’re in the fun business.
One of the secrets to our success is we love our jobs. When everyone does that, it’s contagious to the consumer.
How do you do that?
None of it is necessarily rocket science. It starts with quality. It has to be a quality product that people are proud to be associated with.
[Additionally], it’s fun to bring fun to people. The core of our DNA is that smile that people are greeted with, be it at a restaurant or a hotel, but then it’s that same emotional content we try to translate even to the inanimate things we sell [such as frozen, packaged coconut shrimp] in their look and feel. If you’re associated with something that’s a good time, it’s easier to create a culture that translates that good time idea. Also, Margaritaville is a social brand, about people getting together and enjoying the company of others.
We run some of the top grossing restaurants in Orlando and Las Vegas — excluding the pricey, pricey nightclubs. We’re also apparently the most Instagrammed restaurant.
Brand possibilities, cruise line partnership
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Tell me about your partnership with Norwegian Cruise Line.
We have already been in the cruise business in that we’re at many cruise ports. We’ve been successful for a long time in the Caribbean, where the passenger is looking at that tropical escape. This new partnership lets them take a deeper dive, lets them enjoy the experience on the ship. We’re bringing Margaritaville on board. I’m not even sure where we’re going with it — what kind of other food and beverage and retail ideas we can put onto the ship, selling products like LandShark Lager.
They [Norwegian] are a very entrepreneurial company. It’s possible that we could get into opportunities where we do some themed rooms on a ship, or even a ship someday. Who knows?
But right now it’s food- and beverage-driven. We brand manage it and it’s staffed by Norwegian crews.
Why did you decide to sell to IMC?
So much of our business is brand management that it made sense for us to become what we hope will be the best brand management company and have IMC do operations.
We’d been in business with IMC for two years, and this allows us to focus our energy on the unique part of our business, which is the brand and its DNA, and cross-promoting everything we do to give the consumer that much more value in the business. It’s been a great evolution.
How will you expand the brand’s possibilities at your new Hollywood, Fla., flagship?
For the past five to seven years, developing unique and compelling restaurants at hotels has been huge. We’re doing that with some existing concepts, like the 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar, Landmark Landing, Change in Latitude bar, and a new steak and seafood restaurant. We’re taking the core brand and extending it into complementary experiences all tied into the idea of a good time. We’re not limited to having one Margaritaville restaurant and essentially outsourcing other F&B opportunities, or creating essentially vanilla ones. We’ll be directly on the sand in south Florida. It’s going to be something.
This story has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: Dec. 30, 2014 A previous version of this story misstated International Meal Co.’s ownership, which is of Margaritaville and related restaurants, not Margaritaville Enterprises LLC itself.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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