70 Years, 14 Dining Rooms, and 500 Meals a Day
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By all accounts the fact that it’s a family business has helped the Como Inn survive the tortuous twists and turns any restaurant is sure to take over seven decades. “There is a more personal touch when a restaurant is passed through generations in a family,” maintains Carlucci. In 1924 Italian immigrant and former ice deliveryman Giuseppe Marchetti opened a tiny, unprepossessing 13-table storefront restaurant on the inn’s present site. Today the place is a maze of 14 distinct and individually named dining rooms that seat approximately 1,000 people in relative intimacy. Seven of those are banquet rooms; banquets tend to be much more profitable for the Como than its regular meal service.
Besides a commitment to good food and service, Marchetti says, the key to success in the restaurant business is marketing. “People need to be stimulated all the time, so we try to create constant excitement with our promotions.” For the 70th anniversary Marchetti is throwing the kind of huge benefit bash for which he has become famous. Proceeds from a Roaring Twenties party at the restaurant March 7 will be split among no fewer than eight local beneficiaries, including the Chicago Dance Coalition, the Chicago Fund on Aging and Disability, Maryville Academy, Gallery 37, and the Villa Scalabrini home for the aged. With a high overhead and lots of seats to fill, Marchetti has become a pro at attracting customers–by, for instance, offering free transportation from the Como to a variety of cultural and sporting events. The inn employs a concierge whose sole job is selling theater and opera tickets to restaurant customers and arranging free transportation to performances and then back to the restaurant. And on a recent night some 300 Bulls fans ate there before being bused to the Stadium. All those dining rooms allow the Marchettis to tactfully segregate the different types of customers. “You don’t want to mix up the Lyric Opera audiences with the noisy sports crowds,” explains Marchetti. “That’s a no-no.”
When Chicago producer Robert Perkins and New York-based Jujamcyn Theaters bought the entire Royal George complex last March, the purchase agreement stipulated that Leavitt and Fox would maintain their lease on the theater and cabaret spaces until the end of the Yonkers run or May 1994, whichever came first. Now it looks as if Yonkers may run through May. Notes Leavitt: “If the grosses are there, I will continue to run the show; if they aren’t, I will close it.” Though grosses dipped below $30,000 a week during the recent cold snap, Leavitt says the show has been back in the black since, doing well above $35,000 a week. The show’s recent display ads, however, have included a reference to “final weeks.” Leavitt dismissed as “ridiculous” a rumor that he is continuing to run Yonkers to try to delay the arrival of Angels or to force its producers to book the show into a theater he controls, such as the Briar Street.
