Hi John,
Although this article only mentions RAIN in passing I've been monitoring this article as its been published in one newspaper after another throughout the United States. I've personally seen it published in at least ten. God only nows how many others it made it in beyond my horizons. I strikes me as an example of a meme. In this case a meme telling us what to look for in the malls of the future. Anbd one of those things is.......you guessed it, Rainforest Cafe!!!
Entertainment, retailing merge * Stores and restaurants
beginning to offer attractions as well as products.
by Michael White Associated Press
Dec 13 1997 7:34AM CST, The Fresno Bee
At a Century City restaurant called Dive!, amid decor that might have been taken from the movie "Das Boot," a great white shark looms on a nearby video screen as customers bite into their submarine sandwiches.
An hour's drive to the east, at the Ontario Mills megamall, a shopping excursion can turn into a trip to the forest at the American Wilderness Experience, a sort of high-tech minizoo where rare animals from land and sea are on display just a few yards from discount clothing outlets.
Increasingly, retailers are discovering it might not be enough just to offer customers good products, prompt service or even low prices. They have to entertain them, too. So stores and restaurants alike are offering attractions such as motion rides and interactive games that
were once found only in amusement parks.
The effect is to blur the traditional lines between retailing and entertainment.
"It's all melding together. It's how do you attract the customer and get the most dollars out of them when they get to the destination," said Scott Adelson, managing director of Houlihan
Lokey Howard and Zukin in Los Angeles.
"It's about immersing people in an experience that is entertaining and making them want to take that away with them in as many ways as possible," he said.
The concept is attracting some of the biggest brand names in entertainment.
Disney has announced plans for DisneyQuest, a chain of interactive game centers, as well as its ESPN Grill, restaurants based on the company's sports television subsidiary that will include games and other attractions to entertain diners.
Similar ventures include Texas-based Dave & Buster's, an adult-oriented restaurant chain that also offers activities ranging from billiards to virtual-reality games, and the Rainforest
Cafe group, eateries designed to give diners a big helping of equatorial adventure, with a side of environmental awareness.
There's also Country Star, a chain of family dinner clubs with a country music theme that feature audio listening stations where customers can hear their favorite artists.
And don't forget one of the first efforts at amusement retailing -- the successful Chuck E. Cheese's chain of pizza joints, where kids have been lured by an array of electronic video games since the early '80s.
Sega GameWorks, a joint venture between DreamWorks SKG, Universal Studios and Sega, has said it plans to open 100 high-tech arcade-nightclubs over the next five years. In each case, retail merchandise is combined with food and games.
For some, the combination already has been a formula for success.
A joint venture of film director Steven Spielberg, his DreamWorks studio partner Jeffrey Katzenberg and Chicago-based Levy Restaurants, Dive! in L.A. attracts 30,000 to 40,000
customers per month.
A newer sister restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip averages a slightly higher volume, said Ron Bryman, manager of the Los Angeles restaurant.
The submarine motif includes curved walls braced by steel-like bulkheads, porthole-shaped windows filled with bubbling water and an array of gauges and dials on the ceilings and walls.
Every 45 minutes or so, lights flash and a recording booms out: "Prepare to Dive!" "Flood Torpedo Tubes!" and similar commands.
Developers of the American Wilderness Experience are hoping to draw 500,000 people per year to the attraction, which, in addition to the animals, includes a restaurant and a retail floor that features products that are environmentally friendly and outdoor oriented.
Animals, in displays approved by the American Zoological and Aquarium Association, include a pair of bobcats, the fox-like coatimundi and two species of boaindigenous to
California.
Some of the animals, such as three harbor seals that glide across a large, boulder-backed, 2,000-gallon holding tank, are being held temporarily until a larger, permanent home is found for them, Warr said. Eventually, the tank will house sea otters, he said.
Visitors walk along trails that wind through a 60,000-square-foot display space divided into separate sections for desert, forest and ocean creatures. They exit onto the retail floor, which leads them toward the restaurant.
For Connie McIntyre of nearby Claremont, the attractions make shopping easier because they keep her children entertained.
"The shopping becomes an outing," she said during a recent visit. Son Steven, 14, enjoys GameWorks during the trips.
"It makes it a little easier. It wouldn't be as much of an incentive to go," he said.
The key to success is to attract families in the way that Disneyland and other theme parks attract them, says Kevin Skislock, managing director of investment research for L.H. Friend, Weinress, Frankson & Presson Inc.
Yet hitting the perfect formula isn't necessarily easy.
For example, GameWorks' appeal so far hasn't drawn that lucrative family crowd, Skislock said.
"GameWorks looked great on paper," he said. "But now that they're up -- yes, they're exciting sites, they're different, but the problem is they draw a young male crowd and that's not what theme-park entertainment is all about. You've really got to draw family traffic.
They've work to do on that formula."
(end repost)
Happy holidays,
Dennis
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