Selling Point

Serve up a Signature Dish

 

There are more than 3,000 restaurants in Hawaii. If you’re in the business, how can you set yourself apart? How can you compel customers to come to your place instead of going to a competitor’s?

The answer is a signature item or dish: something for which you’re famous and for which your customers are ono.

Fred Livingston, who has owned many Hawaii restaurants, says that customers will go out of their way to get signature items: “Your signature item can be something that only your restaurant serves or something that your restaurant does the best. A popular signature item is a great benefit and a major draw.”

Livingston recently took over the former Big Island Steakhouse site at Aloha Tower Marketplace and opened the Tower Grill. He features signature items from several of his previous restaurants, including the Matteo’s Caesar salad (once voted “best Caesar salad” by the readers of Honolulu magazine) and the Trattoria Italian Restaurant’s poached salmon.

The Tower Grill also serves the Slavonic Steak from the Crouching Lion, Davey Jones Ribs’ St. Louis pork ribs, and, on weekends, you can have the Tahitian Lanai’s eggs Benedict and banana muffins.

Da Big Kahuna’s Pizza and Stuffs, which recently moved from Mapunapuna to the Airport Retail Center, has a signature dish. It serves about 100 of its garlic cheese balls a day. The bread balls are baked to order in garlic butter and smothered in cheese.

Owner Kelly Suchotzki believes one key to creating a signature dish is consistency. “Our garlic cheese balls have been made by the same employee with the same ingredients for over 10 years. They’ll taste exactly the way you remember them,” Suchotzki says.

Another key is presentation. “We stack it up and it looks good going by. Other patrons oooh and ahhh as they see it. They want to know what it is, and many then order it,” Suchotzki says. He says the garlic cheese balls are also memorable because they are usually shared.

COOL TREAT: Up to 1,000 visitors a day seek out Matsumoto Shave ice in Haleiwa. photo: Karin Kovalsky

Signature dishes abound in Hawaii. Helena’s Hawaiian Food’s signature dish is its pipikaula short ribs. Helen Chong, who will be 90 this year, says she used to make pipikaula from chuck steak, but it was a lot of work. “We switched to U. S. Choice ribs, which we marinate and then dry over the stove first, and that’s what makes ours special.”

Carloads of tourists and locals coming to the North Shore stop at Matsumoto Shave Ice. Up to 1,000 people come to the store each day to buy that special frozen treat, dripping with homemade syrup. What began as a general store now focuses on one refreshing best seller.

Liliha Bakery’s Coco Puff was crafted in the 1960s as a shell of puff pastry with a chocolate puddinglike filling. But, it was a huge flop. About 1990, a new chief baker, Kame Ikemura, reformulated the Coco Puff and added a dollop of chantilly frosting to the top. This time the Coco Puff was a success. Three two-man crews work around the clock to make 5,000 Coco Puffs a day to meet demand.

Zippy’s signature dish is its chili, and, when they opened Napoleon’s Bakery, Charley and Francis Higa felt it needed a signature item, too. The solution was the Napple. The 22 Napoleon’s Bakery locations sell more 5,000 Napples a day.

Ted’s Bakery is famous for its chocolate-haupia pie. Ted Nakamura said the mixing of leftover chocolate and haupia was an accident. However, the pie sold well, and now accounts for half of the bakery’s orders.

Marketing is about wowing people. A great food establishment should be able to create at least one dish that is fantastic, memorable and sets it apart from its competition.

Bob Sigall teaches marketing at Hawaii Pacific University and owns a company called Creative-1. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to Hawaii Business Magazine »