On the fourth season of the Wahlburgers A&E reality television series, viewers watched as brothers Donnie, Mark and Paul Wahlberg prepared for the opening of the fourth restaurant in their family-owned Wahlburgers burger chain, this one in the Coney Island section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. As delays push the opening back, the audience watches Donnie (former star of the 1980s band New Kids on the Block) and Mark (an actor and the former lead singer of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch) challenge each other to video-game duels at the amusement park arcade. Later in the season, viewers see customers pack the restaurant, ordering plates of barbecue bacon cheeseburger (Donnie’s favorite) or turkey sandwiches crammed with orange-cranberry sauce, butternut squash and mayo (Mark’s favorite).
The show documents the Wahlberg family’s love, its quirks and its efforts to expand the Wahlburgers franchise. Meanwhile, the publicity has furnished millions of dollars worth of free advertising and brought a long line of potential franchisers knocking at CEO Rick Vanzura’s door.
“We have been buried with franchise requests since the show started,” said Vanzura. “I spent a large part of my day going through requests. Some of them I know immediately are not going to work, because the individuals don’t meet our criteria. But it’s been totally worth it, because we’ve had a couple come through the channel that have been great matches. We are grateful for the exposure.”
Wahlburgers restaurants are expanding as quickly as the show’s viewership is — In 2014 the show draws some 3.7 million viewers. There are currently seven Wahlburgers restaurants: three in Massachusetts, one in Las Vegas, one in Florida, one in Toronto and that newcomer in Coney Island. Ten more restaurants are planned for this year in such cities as Philadelphia and Miami. In March the company announced agreements with several groups to open new franchises, for a total of nearly 120 stores over the next few years — including five in Canada and 20 in the Middle East. “Our strategy is to work with proven operators with a solid multimillion-dollar net worth,” said Vanzura, “and to sign up territories instead of individual stores”.
The first Wahlburgers restaurant opened in 2011, in Hingham, Mass., across the street from the brothers’ original family-owned restaurant, Alma Nove (named for their mother Alma, a fixture on the reality show). Alma Nove featured fine, upscale Italian cuisine, but the brothers wanted something totally different for their next effort. “As opposed to featuring what Paul loved to cook, the restaurant featured what the brothers love to eat: burgers,” said Vanzura. They had no interest in serving hurriedly cooked, hastily made burgers, though. The Wahlburgs wanted their wahlburgers made from premium, high-quality beef, served on fresh artisan buns and garnished with seasonal produce and sauces that Paul whipped up. “They wanted everything to be top of the line,” said Vanzura. “They really wanted to emphasize the chef-driven aspect of the restaurant.”
Wahlburgers restaurants offer both fast-casual and table-service dining. The menu is, as stated, burger-heavy but also offers salads and vegetarian options. The restaurants are decorated with photos and memorabilia of the brothers through the years, and a strip of TV screens above the bar rotate through their movie and television history. The family is careful not to rely overmuch on name recognition to drive sales, Vanzura says. “We know that themed restaurants have generally short life spans,” he said. “We are all about repeat business and wanting people to come back. We are not trying to be the Rainforest Cafe — there are only so many times you can take having an animatronic bird circling your head.”
Wahlburgers restaurants are designed to encourage lingering, so it was important to provide diners room to spread out. Thus the company looks for sites that measure about 4,500 feet and can offer patio space. “We prefer that it’s all on one level,” Vanzura said. “But in certain urban environments, we know that finding 4,500 square feet is going to be a challenge, so we are OK with smaller or multilevel spaces.” The Coney Island site’s 6,000 square feet, for instance, are distributed so to offer fast-food service on the first floor and an open-air bar and full-service restaurant on the second. — Rebecca Meiser
