DATE: Monday, August 25, 1997               TAG: 9708230397

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA                        LENGTH:   82 lines

SIMPLE SUCCESS IS CHILI CHAIN'S GOAL IN PUSH INTO AREA

With its beaten wood door, weathered brick and Plain Jane menu - the Hard Times Cafe in Old Town Alexandria doesn't seem like a place that could be copied and built off busy suburban roads.

But entrepreneur Dan Rowe believes the no-frills concept will attract customers who've grown weary of chains with ho-hum menus and blah decor.

At Hard Times, which plans to open about six restaurants in Hampton Roads, customers get nothing of the sort. In its cafes, they can settle into worn, oak booths. And they'll find the cafe's walls covered with posters from old western flicks and photos of cowboys driving cattle.

Diners quickly discover that the menu is bareboned and low-budget, with nothing costing more than $6.25. The parchment-color menu features some basics like BLTs and burgers. But it's mostly based on three kinds of chili: slightly sweet Cincinnati, light vegetarian and rough Texas.

``It's nice. It's rustic. And it doesn't put on airs,'' said Debra Ramey, a commercial real estate broker in Hampton. ``It's going to be unique for the market.''

Ramey is helping the owners of Hard Times find about six locations in Hampton Roads. A restaurant in Virginia Beach's Pembroke community should open by the year's end, she said, while the others may open later. The chain also wants to open two cafes in the Richmond area.

That's not all. Rowe said the four-store chain will open 25 locations by the end of 1998. And he believes it can grow to the ``hundreds'' in following years.

Rowe and his partner, Chris Bright, bought a 50 percent interest in the privately held chain last year. The other half still belongs to brothers and founders Fred and Jim Parker.

The Parker brothers opened the first Hard Times restaurant in 1980, using an old rowhouse in Alexandria. They renovated the building, hanging pictures from their father's cattle drives in Wyoming during the 1920s.

Jim Parker likes to tell the stories behind the chili recipes. The brothers loved the chili at Hazel's Old Texas Chili Parlor in Washington, D.C., and used to playfully grill the owner about the ingredients.

``Like all good chili cooks, she wouldn't reveal the ingredients,'' he said. ``My brother would ask, `Is this in it? Is that in it?' Gradually, we sort of narrowed it down by trial and error.''

It took the Parkers more than a decade to open two other locations in Rockville, Md., and Arlington. A fourth in Herndon is a franchised location. Each outlet does about $1.2 million in annual sales.

But the brothers knew they needed help to expand at a faster pace.

``It took us 15 years to open our three units,'' Jim Parker said. ``We realized if we were to recognize the full potential, it was going to take more than the efforts of me and my brother.''

Still, they had reservations. Potential investors had expressed interest in the past, but they wanted to play with the simple menu, ``change this or that,'' Parker said.

``I am always worried, and I think Fred is always worried, about the restaurant losing its character and neighborhood feel,'' he said.

Entrepreneur Rowe didn't seem interested in micromanaging the restaurant's decor and offerings. After all, he readily acknowledges, he is the man selling the ideas, not coming up with them.

``I'm not very good at thinking of new restaurant concepts, but I know how to grow them,'' he told the Parkers during their first meeting.

What Rowe brings to the enterprise is his expertise in bringing fledgling companies to the forefront. He dropped out the University of California at Irvine in the late '80s after a semester to help software engineers build up their business.

More recently, he led the franchise efforts of Chesapeake Bagel Bakery, spurring the chain's rapid expansion from 20 to 200 locations. AFC Enterprises, which owns Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits, bought Chesapeake's parent company last year.

The goal is to have both company-owned and franchised restaurants. That way, the company will be able to identify good employees who'll be able to support the staff at the franchised operations.

Within the next several years, if everything works smoothly, the company could go public, Jim Parker said. And if that happens, he might take a long break from the tough restaurant industry.

``I'm in my 50s now,'' he said. ``Retiring sounds pretty good.'' ILLUSTRATION: COMING SOON: About six Hard Times cafes are slated to

open in Hampton Roads.

NOTHING OVER $6.25: The menu is spare and centered arouns three

kinds of chili.

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