Casual dining sources come into focus on small spaces
By Heath E. Combs -- Furniture Today, February 4, 2007
Las Vegas — Differentiation and focus were the stories here for casual dining producers. Several cited a trend toward smaller cases for smaller spaces.
Cochrane, in a new and larger space here, added a top-grain leather option for dining chair seats, and emphasized its strength as a solid wood resource. It also made a big push into scaled-down, multi-functional wine storage cabinets in a variety of styles, and added smaller bistro tables and chairs.
"People were very pleased ... (with our) new focused approach. We're doing fewer things much better," said President Paul Peters.
Sister company Chromcraft worked to fill voids in its contemporary offerings. "We certainly offer a great value as well as some looks you wouldn't expect to find from us that help us be more well-rounded," said Susan Catchman, director of product development.
At Coaster, built-in, frosted-glass lazy susans made their first appearance on contemporary tables. The company also showed a new contemporary 36-inch frosted-glass-top table that can expand to 72 inches.
Coaster and many other casual dining resources were pleased with traffic here. The company brought 15 more sales representatives here than it did to the last Vegas market, mostly from northeastern states.
Powell also had more reps here, although the company didn't require reps to attend unless they had customers coming, said Tom Liddell, senior vice president of sales.
Dinec saw increased traffic, with 150 dealers on Monday, 120 on Tuesday, about 60 on Wednesday, and an expectation they might see 400 for the week, said Richard Landriault, president. He said the reintroduction of the company's Diva line helped boost traffic.
"Customers were glad we're back," he said.
Amisco said its new permanent showroom space attracted nearly double the number of customers the company saw at previous markets here.
"We saw more customers during two days here than we saw during the last High Point market," said Nolan Mitchell, national sales manager.
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Small is big in casual dining
Jan 31, 2007
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