“Happy Hour 3pm–6pm”
Who is the owner of Cactus Club?
On Wednesday, a significant transaction in the BC restaurant sector was revealed. Richard Jaffray, the original owner of Cactus Club, has sold the entire business to the Fuller family, who also operate Earls Kitchen + Bar.
What goals does Cactus Club have?
Every Guest Leaves HappyTM is our motto. Our staff members are dedicated about providing meals and experiences that will entice guests to visit us time and time again.
Cactus Club: Is it a franchise?
It was spring when a half-block stretch of Toronto’s First Canadian Place’s street-level windows were first covered inside with brown paper bearing the Cactus Club Caf emblem. And it won’t be removed until the late summer or even the fall of 2014 to reveal the new eatery hidden behind it. Therefore, the hundreds of office workers who pass Canada’s highest office tower every day on their way to work will have to wait if they want to learn more about the restaurant chain.
However, with 25 additional Cactus Clubs operating in British Columbia and Alberta, it is easy to predict what will happen. Because they consistently reissue the same restaurant concept, although bigger, glitzier, and more expensive, like any other restaurant chain. Toronto won’t deviate from this pattern: “Our first site in Toronto will be our flagship for the Ontario market,” said Richard Jaffray, founder and president of Cactus, about his chain’s eagerly awaited eastward expansion. We are eager to display the exciting restaurant design it will feature.
Such a remark from Cactus HQ might seem absurd if you had last visited a Cactus Club ten years ago, when their locations resembled any other family restaurant/sports bar combination and their hallmark dish was pizza perogies with smoked bacon pieces. Cactus Club has been around for 25 years, but in the last five, it has become somewhat of a juggernaut. And these days, the rest of the business sits up and takes notice when Jaffray uses adjectives like “exciting,” “showcase,” and “flagship.” They picture hostesses in little black gowns who make the Hooters girls look like cashiers at Harvey’s, slick new restaurants built on budgets unheard of this side of Dubai, and high-quality food offered at absurdly low costs.
Toronto-based mid-range chain executives with common sense are shaking. And a lot of owners of reputable fine-dining establishments are rolling their eyes. One factor is the brilliant hire of Rob Feenie, Vancouver’s favorite native chef, by Jaffray in 2008. When Cactus put the previous master of West Coast haute cuisine in charge of menu development, its food program gained respect right away.
But money—specifically, the enormous stockpots filled with fresh, large notes that Cactus has been pouring into its newest locations—is a much more important factor. Industry gossip is that the Cactus flagship in the Bentall 5 Tower on Vancouver’s Burrard Street cost close to $8 million, despite the company’s stated refusal to divulge on build costs. The business then opened another spectacular showcase-flagship restaurant just five minutes away in Canada Place at Coal Harbour, built for an alleged $18 million, as that 300-plus seat eatery proved insufficient to meet local demand.
“I don’t understand the numbers,” remarked a Toronto restaurateur who runs a fine-dining restaurant with sales comparable to those of Cactus (over $12 million annually) and food costs that are comparable (about 25%), but who spent only $3.5 million on construction and thus quickly recovered his investment.
I have no idea how you manage to secure that kind of funding or, even if you could, why you would spend it on a certain eatery. Do you know how many little burgers you’d need to sell to break even?
Even Stan Fuller, CEO of the 61-restaurant Earls chain located in Vancouver, shook his head and acknowledged being perplexed by those figures. He admitted, “They don’t make any sense to me either. Additionally, he is a silent partner in Cactus Club and a competitor whose business invested $7.5 million in a brand-new King Street West location in Toronto.
Reliable estimates place the annual rent for the unoccupied new Cactus space at First Canadian at $735,000, or $70 per square foot. Furthermore, it makes little difference whether Cactus actually spends twice as much on its own Toronto restaurant or rather spreads unfounded rumors to intimidate rivals. In either case, it is evident that the East Coast chains like Pat & Mario’s, the Pickle Barrel, and Baton Rouge, which they are prepared to destroy, are not the main challenge for Cactus. Rather, it is the posh independent restaurants from which they nonchalantly steal customers. Instead, it’s two other businesses from home, Earls and Joey, both owned by members of the Fuller family, who cooperate mostly on the basis of purchasing power.
The three businesses are actually just different iterations of the same idea, with Cactus catering to a little pickier clientele. Each hires the most attractive floor workers it can, whether they are experienced or, ideally, not. They spend the time necessary to train them to become knowledgeable and hospitable waitresses (and, occasionally, waiters). Additionally, they will occasionally engage in the most benign type of human trafficking, transporting victims to new locations while paying for their travel and lodging expenses. (Some people fall in love, get married, and make their new homes their permanent residences. When Earls launched on King Street, Fuller told me, “Your Toronto boys did well,” in reference to the turnover rate of his waitresses.
Each company goes further than you might initially think to ensure that their consumers receive a high-quality meal. For instance, each Earls restaurant bakes its own hamburger buns. Joey shops at Toronto’s ne plus ultra Cheese Boutique, an expensive cheesemonger to the stars, for cheese and charcuterie. Additionally, Cactus only sells fish that has been endorsed by Ocean Wise and keeps truffle oil in stock in its larders.
Each then tries to outperform its price range in the elusive category of sophistication. Customers at Earls on King Street, for instance, are able to ask for the reserve cellar wine list, which is shown on an iPad similarly to Thomas Keller’s three-Michelin-star Per Se in New York, if they like their hamburgers to be accompanied by a $200 bottle of wine (seriously). The menu at Joey includes sushi as well as a few French words, including frites and demi.
However, it’s at Cactus—where you may get the greatest food—that you run the risk of falling victim to the trickiest illusion of them all. The concept behind the restaurant is that when you eat there, you are eating authentic Rob Feenie cuisine—food prepared by an Iron Chef—but at a discount price and in a setting you can identify with. It is described as “casual fine dining.” There is no such thing. However, in Vancouver, where Cactus Club is rife, I frequently run into recession-weary chefs and restaurateurs engaged in true fine dining who view Cactus Club as a direct and dangerous threat, one that not only drives away old customers but also causes those who remain to gripe about what they perceive to be exorbitant prices for products they view as fundamentally interchangeable.
Even the eateries at Coal Harbour or English Bay, which boast stunning views of the coast, are a quite different animal, it becomes clear upon closer examination. The Coal Harbour Cactus’ bar reminded me more of a large airport than, say, a restaurant because of its 10,000 square foot plus size when I sat there last summer. And it was actually tough for me to persuade my anxious subconscious that last call for our flight home would not suddenly be yelled out by some ominous PA.
The menu also has an unintentionally humorous defect that is shared with Cactus menus throughout the chain: a seemingly unending list of tiny “RF endorsements that come with Feenie-designed menu items. The program must have made sense when the chef first signed up, but now that it has been five years and 90% of the menu is designated as RF-endorsed, the lingering delicacies from earlier times seem to have been quarantined. If you must, get the fish tacos, but be aware that chef Feenie is not interested in working with you.
No idiot, I placed an order for RF-certified goods. Tuna sushi cones, which were the first course of my lunch, perfectly represented the Cactus culinary experience. On the one hand, you receive premium fresh tuna complemented with vibrant pickled ginger, tiny cilantro, green onion, and ripe avocado for a surprisingly tasty and reasonably priced ($4.50 each) taste of Feenie’s renowned culinary sensibility. On the other hand, you experience the taste of cuisine created by committee. The cones were as cumbersome as ice cream cones since they had been oversized for value-seekers rather than being small and delicate. Additionally, they were rolled in harmless marne nori (rice paper), a type of Japanese Wonderbread, rather than being wrapped in assertively flavorful nori (dried seaweed).
All of this to say, you can make chain restaurants’ food as good as you want, but it will always suffer from being made to please too many different people and from its ultimate goal, which is not to dazzle anyone except for the cautious diner who liked a dish at one location and then had it at another branch five kilometers away and was grateful that it tasted the same. If Cactus transports this east unharmed, it ought to be sufficient to overthrow several venerable regional chains. However, good independent eateries let you unwind.
Restaurant evolution: Cactus Club, like any business, keeps reissuing the same idea, albeit glitzier and more expensive every time.
Chef-approved: The Cactus Club menu features an absurdly long list of tiny “RF” endorsements next to Rob Feenie-designed goods.
Who is Joey Tomatoes’ owner?
Over 16 years have passed since this article was published. Some information might not be up to date anymore.
No, you aren’t seeing things twice. Joeys, a casual fine-dining business with its first location just recently launched in Vancouver, does certainly resemble Earls both visually and flavor-wise. Both businesses have executive chefs with impressive backgrounds (Chris Mills at Joeys, who apprenticed with Michael Noble of Earls), four-letter men’s names without possessive apostrophes, an abundance of stacked rock in their decors, vaguely trendy but secure menus that skew oddly toward Asian and Mediterranean cuisine.
It makes sense why they are similar. The same family is responsible for both of the businesses from British Columbia, both of which started out with eateries in Alberta. Joeys is run by Jeff Fuller, and Earls is run by his brother Stan (and also owns a substantial share in the Cactus Club chain). The casual steakhouse chain Saltlik, which recently debuted in Vancouver, is owned by Stewart, brother number three. Leroy Earl, their father, was one of the first A&W franchise owners, and he is the patriarch who established the family business (which, coincidentally, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year).
Joeys has undergone many changes during the years. The original eatery was a family-style pizza and pasta place called Joey Tomato’s, which debuted in Calgary in 1992. The name was changed to Joey Tomato’s Mediterranean Grill eight years later as the franchise evolved and became a little bit more sophisticated. Then Mills was hired the next year, expanding the menu to include more Asian flavors. The name is gradually being reduced to just Joeys as part of its new appearance.
There are currently 13 locations for the business in Washington State, Manitoba, Alberta, and B.C. Additionally, it owns the American franchise Cucina, Cucina. However, this new eatery marks the business’s first venture into Vancouver, and it is located on West Broadway between Granville and Oak.
Each restaurant and business within the family is allegedly unique. However, the new Broadway location shares the same general genes as its relatives, as evidenced by its stacked-rock facade and swaying palm trees outside the entryway. The interior is gloomy and unpleasant, much like Saltlik and the brand-new Paramount Earls. The rear wall’s rough-hewn wood is stained brown, as are the carpets, leather seats, table tops, and tablecloths (with only a scattering of mirrored tiles to lighten things up).
Like practically every other “casual fine-dining” chain on the West Coast, including Earls, the Cactus Club, Milestone’s, Moxie’s, and Joeys, the majority of the employees at Joeys are gorgeous young women with polished grins. Particularly Earls is renowned for the thorough training it offers brand-new hires. Some claim that these eateries produce a priceless talent pool that eventually filters up to more upscale dining establishments, but in my opinion, corporate training is most effective at depersonalizing its personnel. Although our server was pleasant enough, it seemed as though she was giving us pre-written words that were taken from from a manual.
The Mediterranean Tapas Picnic ($19.99) was where we started. Warm pita wedges, garlicky tzatziki and hummus, tempura-battered calamari that wasn’t quite “crisp,” and a mystery, pucker-inducing orange cream sauce were all piled high on the enormous plate. The supposed complimentary bruschetta was definitely unnecessary, so perhaps it was best that it never showed up.
Another enormous dish was the jumbo ravioli loaded with lobster, crab, and ricotta ($16.49), which was served with a lot of lovely grape tomatoes. The dill seemed to be absent, but the lemon cream sauce was lovely and sharp. It had no taste at all.
The Rotisserie Chicken and Rib Combo ($21.99) was my favorite dish. I didn’t like the half a back of ribs (very soft, so obviously boiled, and slathered with a wet and sugary BBQ sauce). However, the slow-roasted chicken was cooked quite well. It was served with buttery mashed potatoes and crisp asparagus and was juicy and moist with a crispy skin and loads of herbs.
In reference to the well-known Quebec rotisserie business, my impressed friend remarked, “It’s almost as excellent as St-Hubert.”
I concurred, giving it higher grades than the preferred roasted-chicken chain in Ontario, saying, “It’s a lot better than Swiss Chalet.”
Joeys should undoubtedly be superior to those locations, which are more like White Spot in terms of ambiance and price. Joeys, Earls, and others of a similar caliber advertise as “premium casual eateries” (sometimes referred to in the trade as casual fine dining). Once upon a time, these might have been inexpensive places to grab a bite, but they aren’t now. They try to fill the middle ground, which is becoming more and more congested, particularly in Vancouver where famous chefs like Rob Feenie and Vikram Vij are now blending casual bistros with their upscale brands.
Chains that offer casual fine dining have a place. They offer predictable, largely consistent food in welcoming settings that exude a pseudo-sophisticated image without being overly scary. They resemble the Starbucks of supper, in a way. In smaller rural towns, they are frequently the best option available or at the very least a sure bet.
It’s clear that Joeys is doing well. The company’s news announcement states that Canadian revenues increased from $23 million in 1999 to $55 million last year. Additionally, Joeys has the greatest average sales per restaurant in Western Canada, according to the Pacific Prairie Restaurant News Magazine.
However, I could purchase a much better lunch at Bin, Lolita’s, Cru, Aurora Bistro, Hapa Izakaya, Cassis, and many other independent casual fine-dining establishments for the same cost as a meal at Joeys, where the servers have sass and the rooms have sizzle. Call me radical, but I’d much rather put my heart and soul into helping the underdog independents than lining the wallets of an already powerful family with subpar food and corporate obedience.