SHEBOYGAN, WISCONSIN RESTAURATEURS UNTERTAKE NATIONAL EXPANSION
SHANNON AND MARCEL BIRÓ TO TAKE BIRÓ AND Ó CONCEPTS NATIONWIDE IN 2006
Sheboygan, WI – Sheboygan-based restaurateurs Shannon Kring Biró and Marcel Biró announced today that they are expanding their growing culinary empire into major metro markets in 2006. The young couple launched Biró Internationale Restaurant Consultants in 2000, Biró Restaurant and Wine Bar in 2002; the Marcel Biró Culinary School in 2003; and Ó – a biró restaurant and Biró OmniMedia in 2004. Biró OmniMedia produces and markets the couple’s national PBS reality-cooking series The Kitchens of Biró, which aired in 83 million US households in its first season. Earlier this year, the couple’s first cookbook, Biró: European-Inspired Cuisine, was released to critical acclaim.
“We are expanding our restaurants and culinary school into the Miami and Los Angeles markets in 2006,” said Shannon Kring Biró, president of Biró Restaurants, Inc., and Biró Culinary Schools, LLC. “Other metro markets will follow. This is the logical next step in our multi-level business strategy, and Marcel and I are excited to bring the Biró and Ó restaurant concepts, as well as our school for home and professional chefs, to major cities that already support what we’re doing.” Kring Biró went on to say that Miami and Los Angeles, in addition to being two of the country’s hottest restaurant destinations, are also two of the markets from which they receive the most fan mail for their television series and sales for their cookbook. Stops in Miami and Los Angeles as part of the six-month Biró: European-Inspired Cuisine media tour this past summer drew sold-out crowds into the high hundreds. Other cities for expansion are likely to include Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, and Newport Beach.
Marcel Biró is no stranger to the metro market restaurant game. One of the youngest chefs in European history to achieve the title Master Chef de Cuisine, Biró is known for winning several coveted awards, for his accomplishments in Michelin-starred restaurants, and for his dedication to demystifying classic cuisine. As a certified chef instructor, he has fed those with a hunger for professional culinary knowledge throughout France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Hungary, Italy, and the US. He has worked at internationally acclaimed restaurants including Emile Jung’s Three-Star Michelin Au Crocodile, has toured Europe with Olympia Master Chef François Geiger, and was personal chef to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In fact, Sheboygan is the smallest market in which the chef has worked. Known as The Brat Capitol of the World, the city of 50,000 is located two hours north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan. Brats, beer, and cheese are the holy trinity of Sheboygan cuisine, and Friday night fish fries are the hottest ticket in town.
Said Biró, “Shannon lived in Sheboygan when we met, and we were tired of eating in the same two good restaurants. I’d worked and managed Michelin star restaurants throughout Europe, so I knew I could go to Chicago or New York and be successful. But Sheboygan was an entirely new challenge for me—a largely untapped market unfamiliar with high-end European cuisine. I thought it would be a great challenge to open a restaurant here, an exciting way to cut my teeth in the US.”
A challenge it was. Continued Biró, “When we opened Biró Restaurant and Wine Bar, we announced at a city meeting that we’d have a tapas bar in the restaurant’s lower level. No one had ever heard of tapas, and to this day, we fight rumors of having topless dancing in our ratskeller.”
The restaurant also faced early difficulty in sourcing ingredients with which local food vendors were not familiar: quark cheese, crème fraîche, poularde, even organic produce. Chicago importers did not make the trip to East Central Wisconsin, so five-hour, round-trip excursions—if traffic was good—became a weekly chore. And though Sheboygan’s restaurant scene has evolved in Biró’s wake, the chef believes he’s outgrown the market. “I’ve opened two restaurants, a culinary school, and launched a national TV series and cookbook here. And though I appreciate the loyal local supporters we do have, I’ve outgrown the market. It’s always been a part of our strategy to move on.”
Indeed, today nearly 70% of Biró Restaurant and Wine Bar’s business comes from outside a 100-mile radius. The couple attributes this in large part to positive national restaurant and book reviews, and to the restaurant being featured on national television and in features in leading mainstream publications such as TV Guide and The Wall Street Journal. Ó, Biró Restaurant and Wine Bar’s casual companion restaurant, has a lower price point and has been embraced my the local community. More than 75% of that restaurant’s clientele is from East Central and Southeast Wisconsin, making transient guest reservations hard to come by. In 2005, guests from at least 40 states and 19 countries have dined at the two Biró restaurants, and enrollment at the Marcel Biró Culinary School is up 700%.
Will the Biró’s Sheboygan-based culinary businesses remain open after the expansion? Said Shannon Kring Biró, “We will offer cuisine and classes here as long as there’s a demand.” She added that in addition to opening new restaurants and culinary schools, the Birós have begun planning for a new season of The Kitchens of Biró and work on their next cookbook, tentatively titled Ó: SpanAsian Cuisine by Biró, which will be released in early 2007. The couple will reside in Miami and Los Angeles.
To learn more about the Biró family of businesses, click birointernationale.com or call Heather Blamey at 920.451.6940. Complete press kits, including photos, recipes, chef bios, TV screeners, and cookbook blads are available upon request.
Chef2Chef News Desk