Joint Venture to Take Over BLT Steak

April

JN business writer Allan Drury reports that Louis Cappelli and BLT will take over management of the BLT Steak in White Plains.

The developer of the Ritz-Carlton, Westchester hotel said yesterday that his company will form a joint venture with the BLT Steakhouse to take over the operation of the restaurant.

Louis Cappelli, who built the who built the 44-story, $600 million downtown hotel and condominium tower, came a day after the Ritz filed a notice with the state indicating it planned to close the restauarant and lay off the 63 workers by July 17. The document, known as a WARN notice, describes the event as a “plant closing” and lists “economic” as the reason.

>Questions about the restaurant’s future prompted the Ritz to move quickly to quash any ideas that the restaurant was going to close.

This comes on the heels of a report yesterday that the Ritz was looking for a third party to take over management of the restaurant. It appears that the hotel is still doing so. In Allan’s story, he writes that Marcie McGeehan, the director of sales and marketing for the hotel, released a statement saying the restaurant would not close.

“I can confirm that we are exploring options with third-party operators regarding operations of BLT, which has been a very successful restaurant since its opening,” she said. “However, at this point no firm agreement has been reached and we continue to operate BLT as normal.

“There is no indication at this point that there will be a closure as a part of this change,” McGeehan said. “There will simply be a new third party operating the space.

Laurent Tourondel, the chef for whom the restaurant is named — Bistro Laurent Tourondel — will remain associated with the restaurant, a spokeswoman said today.

Here is the link to Allan’s BLT story.

Here is the link to my Small Bites post yesterday about the third party search.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 5:32 pm by Liz Johnson.
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2 Responses to “Joint Venture to Take Over BLT Steak”

Lena April 16th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Hi, Liz. Love the blog. I was wondering, are there any gourmand societies in Rockland County?
Michael S April 17th, 2009 at 11:02 am
“remain associated with….... ” Talk about vague….......

Does that mean he will continue to get a royalty check for using his name? or will he actually have a presence in the kitchen and menu development.

That seems to be a story to get.

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