KoKoMos chain spreads to Phillyv

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Honey barbecue, sweet and sour and the spicy “sudden death” chicken wings have made a name for KoKoMos in Harrisburg.
Sean Barowski hopes the wings make a name for him nationwide in a chain of sports-themed restaurants, which is expanding into southeastern Pennsylvania. He also intends to bottle his wing sauce and sell it in grocery stores.
KoKoMos will open a restaurant in Conshohocken, a Philadelphia suburb, Aug. 18 and in the Holiday Inn across from Veteran’s Stadium in Philadelphia Sept. 8. Another restaurant will open early next year in West Hanover Township, Dauphin County.
Restaurants that expand into chains face many challenges, including name recognition and producing a consistent product. Several other area chains – El Rodeo and Isaac’s Restaurant & Deli, for example – are expanding in the region, but they have chosen to stick to Central Pennsylvania because of those challenges.
Barowski initially wants to expand into an area stretching from Maryland to Massachusetts and then go nationwide. He sees his competition as Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar, Ruby Tuesday Inc., T.G.I. Friday’s and similar restaurant chains. He said his wings are good enough to make a name for the restaurant and get people to try other crowd pleasers, such as his miniburgers, ribs and crab cakes.
“Our concept is wings with a family atmosphere that turns into an adult playground at night,” Barowski said.
Revenue in 2002 was between $5.5 million and $5.7 million, Barowski said. He expects that to increase to between $10 million and $12 million this year. He has 60 full- and part-time employees per restaurant.
Barowski, a former medical-malpractice insurance broker, bought the first restaurant on Market Street in Camp Hill from
fellow Harrisburg restaurateur
Donny Brown in 1996. He then opened restaurants on Linglestown Road and on North Second Street in downtown Harrisburg. The Linglestown location was rebuilt after a 2001 fire.
Barowski said he is in year six of a 10-year plan. He hopes to sell the sauces in grocery stores in the next two to three years, unless someone can make him an offer to do it sooner.
“It’s all about branding right now,” Barowski said. “When you say KoKoMos in Harrisburg, everybody says ‘wings,’ and that’s what I want everywhere.”
He plans to decide in October how many restaurants he will open in 2004. As the majority shareholder, he owns all of the restaurants. In the next 12 to 18 months, he plans to sell franchises.
He said that is why he expanded in Philadelphia – to show venture capitalists that his restaurant can make it in the nation’s fifth-largest market. If entrepreneurs are interested, he wants to sell them a franchise license.
Barowski said he is spending $500,000 to open the two restaurants in the Philadelphia area. He spent $350,000 when he opened KoKoMos in downtown Harrisburg in March, he said.
Barowski is the managing partner. His brother, Stan Barowski, is vice president and supervises the Harrisburg restaurants. The Barowskis have several minority partners that partially own and help them run the restaurants. The Holiday Inn has a 49 percent interest in the KoKoMos at the Vet restaurant.
The most important issue a restaurateur must consider when expanding is whether the name of the restaurant can be trademarked, said Linda Lipsky, a restaurant consultant in Broomall. Among other locations, there is a Kokomo’s dance club in Orange County, Calif., and a Kokomo’s Family Fun Center in Saginaw, Mich. The owners could not be reached for comment.
Barowski said he is not concerned about a challenge because he filed a trademark request two years ago for the name KoKoMos that would include his mascot – a grinning sports coach holding a beer and a hamburger.
Translating his reputation for great wings to another market also will be difficult, Lipsky said.
“People may know the name in Harrisburg, but it doesn’t mean a thing in Philadelphia and
Conshohocken,” she said.
That situation may affect hiring if experienced waiters are reluctant to try an unproven chain. He may have to offer better benefits to lure waiters.
Isaac’s Restaurant & Deli, a Lancaster-based chain, has tried to offer better benefits to its waiters to keep turnover low, said Philip Wenger, president and chief executive officer of Isaac’s. The chain has 19 locations in Central Pennsylvania, and Wenger said he plans to stay focused on this region to maintain quality service.
Making sure each restaurant serves the same quality of food is another challenge, said Wenger, Lipsky and other restaurateurs. All the standards for each restaurant have to be documented and double-checked.
El Rodeo, a Mexican restaurant based in Harrisburg, will not expand beyond Central Pennsylvania because the three families who own the chain believe it would be too difficult to manage the consistency of the food and service between locations, said Monica Arellano, a co-owner. Managers have found that chefs at the chain’s five restaurants sometimes change the spices in certain recipes to suit their tastes, she said.
Barowski said he has the same food suppliers in the Southeast and that the sauces will be made in Harrisburg and shipped daily to the restaurants.
His management team will visit the Philadelphia-area restaurants once a week to check consistency. In addition to these obstacles, Barowski faces several of his own. Two other expansions did not work out. Barowski opened a seasonal restaurant in 2002 in Lykens at the Bumble Bee Hollow golf resort. He said it was successful, but he could not get a liquor license for it, so he decided he would not return there. He opened a snack bar, which sold wings and other appetizers, at the Mechanicsburg location about three years ago, but he said that did not do well.
Barowski also must settle old tax debt from the Market Street location from 1994 to 1998. He owes about $90,000 to the state and is on a payment plan, he said. As part of the purchase of the property, Barowski took on the previous owner’s tax debt that had accumulated before Barowski bought the property in 1996.