Thursday, July 19, 2001 | 8:34 a.m.
With its own style firmly in place, the ESPNZone has thrown its hat in the ring of themed eateries vying for attention amid the bright lights and glitz of the Strip.
The Las Vegas ESPNZone restaurant opened Friday at New York-New York. As luck would have it, it's the seventh in the nationwide, Disney-owned chain.
The restaurant is inspired by the 24-hour sports channel's popularity.
"Las Vegas is a good sports town," John Pierce, regional marketing manager for ESPNZone, said. "There's a good population and love of sports and that's a good combination for ESPNZone."
The 33,000 square-foot, two-story ESPNZone is part bar, arcade, gift shop, art museum and TV room featuring all sports, all the time.
In grand Las Vegas style, the ESPNZone's official grand opening tonight will feature a motorcycle jump by "Mad" Mike Jones over New York-New York's Brooklyn Bridge.
Pioneered by the Hard Rock Cafe in the '80s, theme eateries have bloomed in most of the country's larger cities.
Although the themes vary widely from automobile racing to the National Rifle Association they share some similarities: less-than-haute cuisine, a costumed staff, walls of autographed memorabilia and a gift shop to boost the bottom line.
ESPNZone is different, Pierce insists.
"We've learned a lot from the people that have come before us," Pierce said.
And there have been quite a few. ESPNZone sits where the music-themed Motown Cafe once stood and limped along financially until it closed in October.
Of the themed restaurants in Las Vegas, five, including Motown, have perished since September 1998: Official All-Star Cafe, Country Star American Music Grill, Dive and Race Rock.
But the ESPNZone seems to thrive in a field where so many others have struck out.
The first ESPNZone opened in July 1998 in Baltimore. Since July 1999 an ESPNZone has opened in major cities around the country nearly every three months.
As it continues to grow, so do its numbers, said Tom McCartney, senior vice president of operations for New York-New York. ESPNZone restaurants around the country have increased their original sales goals within the first year, he said.
"It's more than themed content, it's multimedia and an ever-evolving development of theme," McCartney said. "What ESPNZone is presenting in its establishment today will be different tomorrow by the very nature of the sports industry."
That's why the "ESPN experience," as Pierce calls it, continues to draw customers.
"We have a 98 percent return," Pierce said. "People will come once to check it out, and if it's not good, they'll tell their friends. We have good word-of-mouth."
Inside line
The decor isn't minor league, either.
ESPNZone features large, custom-made artwork of Las Vegas sports stars and events.
At the entrance loom the Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, which represent the 1985 fight between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Tommy "The Hitman" Hearns. Next to the sports bar is a nod to the neon Vegas Vic done over to look similar to local tennis star Andre Agassi.
"We don't just put up banners or things that you can see anywhere," Pierce said. "This is specific to ESPNZone and Las Vegas."
The ESPNZone is made up of three parts -- the Sports Arena, the Screening Room and the Studio Grill.
The Sports Arena is filled with games centered on sports. There're the usual video games, virtual car races and a climbing wall in the Sports Arena. But there are also games created for ESPN such as the College Hoops, named after a popular ESPN program, a duckpin bowling alley and football toss.
For the first time in an ESPNZone, a full bar and lounge has been built near the game room.
"We thought Vegas, being a night town, would be good to have a place to come and have a drink late at night," Pierce said.
The lounge is named after Las Vegan Al Bernstein, a boxing analyst for ESPN. The wood-and-leather lounge has black-and-white, silver-framed photos of Bernstein's Top 10 fight picks.
"We wanted to keep this part understated," Pierce said. "This is the only place you will find framed photographs in an ESPNZone."
The Screening Room features 11 "Zone Thrones," leather reclining chairs with speakers in the headrests, placed 10 feet from two 14-foot TV screens surrounded by 12 36-inch TV screens.
Each booth in the room has its own flat 18-inch TV screen and speakers set in the booth's headrest so that guests can watch a specific game up close as well as view other games happening that day.
ESPNZone opened last Friday for guests to get a sneak preview before the official opening.
Raymond Kolacki and John Eskridge from Orange County, Calif., recently drove to Las Vegas to catch a concert. They had heard about ESPNZone from friends in other cities and decided to check out the menu as well as the Seattle Mariners game.
"The food is excellent, better than I expected," Kolacki said. "We came back twice."
"I love sports," Eskridge said as he tipped a beer and whooped for the Mariners. "I watch ESPN all the time. I can come in here, watch the game on ESPN, get different food (than at a bar) and get the (game) experience."
The Studio Grill features appetizers, such as a pound of chicken wings for $8.49 or a basket of cheese fries for $7.99, as well as signature dishes, such as the Apple, Walnut and Bleu Cheese Salad for $7.99, or the Baby Back Back Back Back Ribs (named for Chris Berman, an ESPN broadcaster, who uses the phrase "back, back, back" when describing home runs) for $19.99.
"People will come for the theme, but they won't come back unless they like the food," Pierce said.
More than a pretty face
That mindset may keep ESPNZone in business, said Ron Paul, president of Technomics, Inc., a restaurant consulting firm in Chicago.
When it comes to theme restaurants there seems to be a wear-out factor among the public, he said.
"The heavier the emphasis is on the theme, the less emphasis there is on the food and the less likely it is that people will come more than once," Paul said.
The Hard Rock Cafe was the first theme restaurant to get a purchase of -- and hold on to -- the tourist's dollar. Its national successors, such as Planet Hollywood and the Fashion Cafe, with their walls of memorabilia and average burger-and-fries fare, have not done as well.
"They became too much like museums," Paul said.
ESPNZone will succeed, he assured, even among the other themed establishments, usually less-expensive hotel bars and sports books, because it is a place to go for the love of sports.
"They are not limited in their appeal," Paul said of the ESPNZone. "They have a 'wow' appeal. It's not like any hotel bar with a giant TV."
The Official All-Star Cafe, which once sat across the street from the ESPNZone, closed its doors in December 1999.
But unlike ESPNZone, the cafe was not meeting the customers needs, he said. As a consultant he saw the cafe's demise coming.
All-Star Cafe had a few TVs tuned in to random sporting events, served expensive food and sprinkled sports memorabilia around its booths, Paul said.
"It was too much of Planet Hollywood for sports," he said, commenting on the closure of Planet Hollywoods around the country. "Planet Hollywood didn't fail for food, it failed because there was no reason to come back."
ESPNZone is ahead of the game there, he said.
Before entering the Las Vegas market, ESPN had a game plan, Pierce said. It analyzed the restaurants in town that were popular and read the "Zagat Survey" for Las Vegas.
They found that tourists who come to the entertainment capital of the world want to sit down to simple steak-and-potatoes fare, Derek Rettell, culinary operations director for ESPNZone, said.
So, foregoing fancy entrees, Rettell chose a beefy fillet and New York Strip with simple potato sides as its meat anchor on the menu.
"There is more grilled fish at this ESPNZone than other locations," Rettell said. "But the regional thing in Vegas is steak."
The menu will continue to change over time as customers' tastes change, and, he said, there will always be something interesting for the gourmet palate.
One item that's not going anywhere is the Krispy Kreme Sundae -- a dream come true for Rettell, who creates the food for each ESPNZone.
"I love Krispy Kreme and I always wanted to make a desert with Krispy Kreme," Rettell said.
During the first three days of ESPNZone's soft opening, the three-tiered sundae ($6.49) was the second best-selling desert behind the ESPNZone's signature Chocolate Chip Cookie Sundae, a half-pound cookie baked in an iron skillet and topped with ice cream and fudge.
"We realize we have to serve burgers and wings because we are a bar," Rettell said. "But we don't have to stop there."
Scoring big
Los Angeles resident Jarred Causly makes a trip to Las Vegas four or five times a year to play at the tables and unwind on the Strip.
When he rolled into town recently, he passed the ESPNZone and made a beeline for the game room where he could play games and catch sports scores on the mounted televisions around the room.
"I love sports and I love anything ESPN," Causly said.
If he wants to gamble in Las Vegas, he can do that anywhere, he said -- but there is only one ESPNZone.
"There are no gambling pressures here," Causly said. "It's comfortable and I'm surrounded by sports."
Terra Tienhaara and her friend, Tom Ellingson, came to the ESPNZone on a recent afternoon to watch the Mariners game. They had heard of ESPNZone from a friend who had been to the Baltimore location.
They said the bar atmosphere and the familiarity of the ESPN cable channel attracted them.
"ESPN is to sports what MTV is to music," Ellingson said. "It's always on. It's a logical decision to come here if you like sports."
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