Posted Mar 24, 2009, 4:18 AM
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Ferris Wheel Hater
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 8,371
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Quote:
Keg Restaurants Ltd. owner David Aisenstat will follow in the footsteps of his legendary restaurateur father Hy Aisenstat March 30 when he’s inducted into the B.C. Restaurant Hall of Fame. He will also tread Hy’s path when he opens a new Keg this year in the now vacant Davie Street castle that his father admired for 20 years before finally leasing to open Hy’s Mansion in 1979. Arranging permitting for that opening is one of many tasks 52-year-old Aisenstat has on his plate. He will continue to build his 114-restaurant empire that Hy started in 1955 by opening a restaurant simply called Hy’s in Calgary.
He is excited about launching a new radio station – Shore 104 – in June in partnership with investors such as Sam Feldman and Sam Belzberg. That adult alternative-format station’s launchcomes in the lead-up to the 19-year-old summer HSBC Celebration of Light fireworks festival which Aisenstat helped save by committing “hundreds of thousands” of dollars. Fireworks music will be simulcast on the FM station. Aisenstat is chairman of the board of trustees at the Vancouver Art Gallery. That board, he said, has not yet determined where the gallery will move after the Olympics. Speculation is rife that the cultural institution’s home will be the Plaza of Nations, but Aisenstat said trustees have not ruled out a site at Georgia and Hamilton streets known alternately as Larwill Park or the former Greyhound bus depot. Aisenstat also spends time and money helping others through: the Keg Spirit Foundation, which has given nearly $4 million to charities in the past seven years; and the Me to We organization, which encourages global thinking and is hosting a September gala at Vancouver’s GM Place that will include a talk from the Dalai Lama.
Between spoonfuls of seafood chowder at his Granville Street Shore Club, Aisenstat revealed growth plans for his restaurants. He expects his second Shore Club to open in the Westin Ottawa Hotel in September. His Toronto Ki ModernJapanese + Bar has been such a success that he plans to open a second Ki in Vancouver’s Shangri-la Hotel this fall. No new Gotham Steakhouse and Bars are planned, even though that high-end restaurant is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month. Nor are any additions anticipated for Aisenstat’s seven-location Hy’s chain. But there will be growth for Aisenstat’s Keg Restaurants chain, which he operates separately from the other brands. The Keg has been his pride and joy on and off since 1982. That’s when he first became a director and investor in what was a venture traded on the old TSE Stock Exchange. He has expanded the 9,500-employee Keg to 104 locations across North America, which combine to generate roughly $470 million in annual sales. Planned local Keg openings – aside from the one on Davie Street – includeone at the corner of Mainland and Nelson streets in Yaletown this summer and one in Coquitlam later this year near where a decades-old Keg was destroyed in a 2006 arson attack.
“One of the things that you can’t help but notice at the Keg is that there are a lot of families. There are seniors. There’s a real broad appeal,” he said. “We try to make it fun.” Aisenstat almost didn’t get the chance to leave his imprint on the chain that George Tidball founded in North Vancouver in 1971.
After graduating from Brentwood College School, he studied at the University of British Columbia, Dalhousie University and the University of Western Ontario. Nabisco recruited Aisenstat when the economics major was one course short of a degree. He was posted in Montreal, Toronto and then New York. As a single twentysomething corporate strategist, Aisenstat spent the late-1970s working hard, visiting Studio 54 and generally enjoying life. Then Hy phoned with an urgent request that his son join him at his Palm Springs home. “I said, ‘I’ve got this issue of a job, Dad. But, thanks,’” Aisenstat recalled. “He said, ‘You are coming. You’re leaving Friday evening. You’ll be three hours late Monday. But you’re coming.’ I didn’t know what the hell this was about, whether he was sick or what.” Hy had decided to spend less time managing his Vancouver-based, seven- restaurant Hy’s chain. The 55-year old had fixed up his Palm Springs retirement home and planned to spend his final days golfing and mixing with country club friends. Hy had no one to fill his shoes, so he offered his son a corporate development job with the company. Seven years later, when Hy died, his son became president. Leaving Nabisco for the restaurant business was inspiring enough that Aisenstat soon had a hankering to get involved with a second steakhouse brand: the Keg.
After Tidball, he was the Keg’s second-largest shareholder when U.K.- based Whitbread plc bought the company in 1987. The global brewer botched its attempt to use the Keg to establish a North American restaurant beachhead.
“Kegs were fun, energetic places. But these [Whitbread] guys didn’t like that too much. They had a guy in charge who didn’t like drinking, didn’t like eating meat, among other things that he apparently didn’t like,” Aisenstat said. “They were alienating the Keg customer base by not focusing on being a steakhouse, not supporting the fun that the bar created in the place, and
they weren’t really doing anything that would attract new customers.” Aisenstat bought the Keg from Whitbread in 1997, when the chain had about 80 locations. Longtime friend, Kingswood Properties Ltd. president Lorne Segal praised Aisenstat’s business savvy and his resolve to expand his businesses while giving back to the community during the current economic downturn. Segal chairs the 2009 Courage to Come Back awards, which will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel April 30. He has witnessed Aisenstat’s generosity first-hand. At a previous Courage to Come Back awards gala, Aisenstat discreetly tucked a folded piece of paper into Segal’s hand before he left . It was a cheque for $50,000. “He’s contributing back and taking
advantage of the position he’s in now, which is a stronger position than many,” Segal said. “Instead of saying times are tough, let’s pull back, he’s saying times are tough and this is when people need help more than ever.” Aisenstat has been single for the past two years, and he has no children. His first wife died of cancer. His second marriage ended in an amicable divorce.
He travels constantly and enjoys golf, skiing and heavily charred steaks.
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Source: In this coming weeks BIV
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