ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602230039
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
Western Virginia may be hundreds of miles from the Wild West, but a new restaurant wants to bring the chuck wagon to Big Lick.
Round Up, a Western-theme steak house, opens today at the site of the former Kenny Rogers Roasters restaurant at Valley View Mall. And if the Roanoke Round Up is a success, its owners plan to franchise the format.
The restaurant - with its potted cacti and Indian wall hangings - is "contemporary Western," said John Fahlgren, president of Roasters of Virginia, the franchise that also operates Kenny Rogers restaurants in the Roanoke area.
Fahlgren, whose office is in Charleston, W.Va., said the partnership initially had planned to open a steak house in Charleston but couldn't find suitable property. Still eager to give the theme steak house format a try, they began looking at their existing Kenny Rogers locations. The Valley View restaurant seemed an obvious candidate for a make-over because of its size - larger than many Roasters eateries - and location, he said.
"We were a quick-service restaurant mixed in with a whole lot of full-service dinner houses," Fahlgren said, noting that Applebee's, the Olive Garden, Shaker's and Texas Steak House all operate sit-down restaurants along the roads around Valley View Mall. Diners who wanted fast food, he said, often went inside the mall or to nearby Hershberger Road.
"The full-service customer is just different from the quick-service one," Fahlgren said. "They have different demands."
One such demand is a beverage menu that offers more than sodas. As long as the restaurant sported the Kenny Rogers label, it couldn't serve alcohol. Round Up, on the other hand, will serve beer, wine and mixed drinks.
Roasters of Virginia was one of the founding franchises in the Kenny Rogers system, so it was given leeway to experiment with the new concept, Fahlgren said. Round Up will continue to serve Kenny Rogers chicken and ribs, but the expanded menu also includes steaks, fajitas and salads.
The Kenny Rogers restaurant closed in November. Since then, the Roasters partnership has spent about $85,000 to renovate the interior. The restaurant seats 110 and, once it's fully staffed, will employ about 60, said John Whittington, managing partner for Round Up. Dean Ringelberg is executive manager.
The Roasters partnership opened its first restaurant in 1992, at Roanoke's Towers Shopping Center. The franchise now operates nine restaurants in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky and plans to open five more this year.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Dean Ringelberg (left) will beby CNBmanaging the Round Up restaurant for John Fahlgren (center) and John
Whittington when it opens today.