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Shopping Centers Today -> March 2004
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COOKS IN HEAVEN
Kitchen buffs get gadgets and guidance at Sur La Table
BY MAURA K. AMMENHEUSER
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“This is my toy store,” Ruth Ann Michaelis said with a grin. The clerks are knowledgeable, she says, and the selection is broad enough to include hard-to-find items. “If it’s not here, you don’t need it.”
Sur La Table (French for “on the table”) caters to professional chefs and enthusiastic home cooks. Created in 1972 in Seattle’s Pike Place Farmers’ Market, Sur La Table offers cooking classes and boasts a corporate history of cutting-edge merchandising (it even claims to have introduced the Cuisinart food processor to the U.S. West Coast, for instance).
The Behnke family and some investors bought Sur La Table in 1995 and then expanded into 17 states. The company also sells over the Web and through a 9 million-circulation catalog launched in 1988.
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Landlords also love Sur La Table’s “interactivity,” as several put it, referring to the classes, book signings and celebrity appearances.
“We love their cooking school,” said Pamela R. Brady, vice president of leasing for street retail at Federal Realty Investment Trust, Rockville, Md., which developed Pentagon Row, Arlington, Va.; and Santana Row, San Jose, Calif. Both centers feature Sur La Table. “We love that they’re so PR-oriented. They bring in cooks and authors … We love the traffic, and their neighbors love the traffic.”
“Two key words: fun and comfort,” said Rick Lemmo, vice president of corporate communications at Los Angeles-based Caruso Affiliated. Caruso operates The Promenade at Westlake, a 200,000-square-foot open-air center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., which has a Sur La Table. “It’s everybody’s store. Chefs can feel rewarded by finding something they can only find there.” Amateurs can explore in a nonthreatening environment, Lemmo says.
“We are a cooking store first and foremost,” said Renée Behnke, Sur La Table’s president. The company peddles a 12,000-item inventory of cookware, glassware, gadgets, appliances, linens and decorative items — from the ordinary (rubber spatulas, wooden spoons) to the specialized (sushi molds) to the high-end ($599 commercial-grade espresso machines) to the merely amusing (a cast-iron, pig-shaped bacon press). Some of the merchandise is imported from exotic locales to facilitate ethnic cooking — tagines, conical North African earthenware vessels used for steaming, for example.
Behnke wouldn’t discuss the privately held company’s revenues or long-term expansion plans, except to say that the stores (versus the classes or the catalog and online sales) generate 75 percent of Sur La Table’s revenue. According to Faith Hope Consolo, vice chairman of New York City-based Garrick-Aug Store Leasing, sales average $1,000 per square foot chainwide. (There’s a Sur La Table at the exclusive Americana Manhasset (N.Y.) mall on Long Island.
The clerks are thoroughly trained in techniques and products. Lemmo recalls searching everywhere for a scone cutter of a particular size. No luck. Finally, a Sur La Table clerk told him that nobody made one in that size, but suggested a different tool that would do the same job.
And if the sales staff can’t help, there’s the menu of cooking classes: desserts, Thai cuisine, barbecue and more. All this served up in bright, 6,000-square-foot spaces packed with merchandise to make nearly anyone crave quality time in the kitchen.
“We worked really hard to make this as exciting as we possibly can,” Behnke said. “People come in and say, ‘Wow!’ And we say, ‘Can we help you?’ They say, ‘No, not yet,’ and they wander.”
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| Besides offering a wide range of products sold by knowledgeable staff, Sur La Table offers cooking classes. |
“American customers, they buy what they know,” Stammler said. “They need to be comfortable about the product. I go into lots of stores and test the sales associates. I’m very impressed on how well [Sur La Table’s clerks] present the benefits and features.”
Sur La Table favors freestanding sites and lifestyle centers; only six stores are in enclosed malls. Behnke says she likes proximity to upscale groceries and restaurants. The chain opened nine stores in 2003, and it plans to open 15 units annually over the next two years.
San Francisco-based Williams-Sonoma, the 236-store chain that nearly everyone cites as Sur La Table’s competitor, likewise boasts cooking classes, a strong catalog business and upscale cookware and equipment.
But observers note some distinctions between the chains. Eric Doran, executive chef at The Beauty Shop (a Memphis, Tenn., restaurant created in a former 1950s beauty salon) says Sur La Table offers better service and deeper product knowledge. He shops there, he says, because “there’s always something new to put in the arsenal.”
Williams-Sonoma’s lines, Behnke said, are “a very edited selection. They say, ‘Those are the best two peelers.’ We say, ‘We have six peelers, and here’s what they do.’ … They are a gift store more than a cooking store.”
Sur La Table’s audience overlaps with those of many other chains. Behnke mentions department stores, local boutiques, catalogs and Web sites; others name Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel, though these, they say, focus more on decor and less on encyclopedic product knowledge. Sur La Table, meanwhile, doesn’t deal in furniture and limits its stock of dishes and glassware.
But New York City-based retail consultant Howard Davidowitz notes that 80 percent of Sur La Table’s merchandise can be found at Bed Bath & Beyond, Pottery Barn, Target or Wal-Mart, often for less.
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| The chain has 12,000 items, including appliances, cookware, linens, glassware and gadgets. |
Still, counters Susanna Linse, Sur La Table’s marketing manager, the chain will always be able to offer unique products because it develops many of them in-house. And mass merchandisers don’t provide great service, she adds.
Davidowitz, however, sees more challenges besides. Investors pressure small private companies to grow quickly, for example, but it’s difficult to expand a company like Sur La Table. “You need passionate people, specialist people,” he said. “This is not a cookie-cutter kind of business.”
The classes and a commitment to enriching shopper experience are crucial to Sur La Table’s future success, according to Linse. Behnke, meanwhile, asserts that her biggest challenge is “not to lose the heart and soul of the company.” As she sees it, “We can always find a million locations and find the product.” Attracting and training dedicated staff, on the other hand, is harder, she says.
Sur La Table’s executives will have to judge how big and how fast to grow. Meanwhile, they continue whipping up their special blend of quality merchandise, know-how and approachability, not to mention good looks.
“The stores are very, very pretty,” Consolo said. And the user-friendly products, she adds, are a draw too.
“A lot of this has a professional spin,” she said. “Even though it’s not difficult to use, it gives you the feeling of, ‘I can be a pastry chef!’ It really is a ‘cook’s paradise.’”
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