Different names, same outcome

I'm just speculating here. I'm not a restaurant maven.

But it's occurred to me that a restaurant by any other name must be carrying the aura and karma of previous restaurants that have occupied the same space.

Now my sample is pretty small, just two locations. But in both, restaurants seem to turnover rather rapidly. Over the past 20 years one of them in an up-scale shopping center, but housed in a separate building with plenty of parking and visibility but no traffic congestion, has had at least eight different owners.

Each metamorphosis changed the entire brand: cuisine, name, trade dress, logo. I remember when we moved into the area it was a steak house with a small but loyal following. But the following was too small apparently.

Then in succession it became a fish house, an Italian bistro, a steak house again, an all-you-can-eat buffet, a Mexican buffet, a Mongolian buffet, an Asian bistro.

The other spot clung to the same concept - sports bar and grille - through four or five ownerships and identity changes, then went to a family restaurant, and is now on another reincarnation of sports bar.

So what does this have to do with branding?

Just this: it's the market segment that really "owns" the brand. Those people have long memories, and once a "place" is classified as not my kind of place, that memory lingers no matter what.

An "under new management" banner won't cut it.

The lesson to branders: be sure you know the history of the location before signing the lease.