As a reader of Colorado Company Magazine, chances are you’ve eaten at the Palm at least once, if not many times. Famous for high-powered business lunches, local celebrity sightings, prime steak and Nova Scotia lobster, the Denver Palm recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. However, the first Palm opened in New York in 1926, giving the “Palm Management Group” 80 years of experience learning what makes a restaurant successful. The first white-tablecloth restaurant in the U.S. to successfully duplicate itself in another city, they now have 30 restaurants: one in almost every major city in the U.S., and a couple as far away as Mexico and Puerto Rico. Two London Palms open next year in the UK.

Sitting back in a booth at the Denver Palm, General Manager Dan Foster looks happy and relaxed. He just returned from Milan, Italy, where he got engaged in a “romantic little restaurant”, after carrying the ring in his jacket pocket through customs and on an 11-hour flight. Foster, young, handsome and well dressed with slicked-back dark hair, looks Italian himself, and knows a lot about Italian restaurants. Not surprising, given that he’s been with the Palm Management Group for more than 9 years - ever since he graduated from UNLV (University of Northern Las Vegas) with a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Foster has a pretty good idea what his future looks like, and he likes the look of it: most of the Palm GMs in the big cities have been with the Palm Management Group for 15-30 years.

In the 1920s, John Ganzi and Pio Bozzi, both from Parma, Italy, but strangers to each other, immigrated to New York with their families. They met in New York, and started a friendship that would last the rest of their lives (and their descendants’ lives to this day). They went into business together opening a hole-in-the-wall spaghetti joint at 837 Second Avenue. They intended to name their restaurant “Parma”, but the city officials misunderstood their Italian-accented English and granted them a license for “Palm” instead. The restaurant soon built a reputation for impeccable service and excellent food, and was frequented by many of New York’s most famous and influential citizens - people often more interested in steak than pasta. John Ganzi often found himself running up the street to purchase steak from the local butcher. Before long, the Palm became just as well known for its steak as for its pasta. These days, Palm restaurants serve over 750,000 steaks (and 200,000 lobsters!) each year.
In 1948, Bozzi and Ganzi turned down a lucrative offer to sell their building to skyscraper developers. The New York Palm is there to this day. According to “The Palm Restaurant Cookbook” author Brigit Légère Binns, the restaurant “thrived and remained virtually unchanged through the Great Depression, Prohibition, World War II, the Eisenhower years, and the moon landing.” In 1973, with John Ganzi’s and Pio Bozzi’s grandsons Wally and Bruce now at the helm, a second restaurant, Palm Too, was opened across Second Avenue. Between the two restaurants there were now a total of 22 employees (there are more than 2,000 employees these days).

The Palm Management Group is still owned by both families, with the fourth generation of Ganzis and Bozzis about to take over. “It is a corporation, but a family-owned corporation,” says Foster. “It’s not publicly traded. The family, the management team is very hands-on; they visit each location about once each year, and attend every new opening.” Today, the Palm is the oldest continuously operated, family-owned, white-tablecloth restaurant to expand across the country. “There’s a team at the corporate office that spends a great deal of time scouting out possible new locations; doing market research, feasibility studies, and such,” says Foster.

The most successful Palm location is the Las Vegas Palm, averaging $15 million in sales annually. “At the Palm, profit trickles down, in a very big way… a good year (can mean) college for your kid or a new car,” says cookbook author Légère Binns. They have semiannual managers and chefs meetings, and a genuine concern for their employees that goes beyond the norm for typical employer/employee relationships. “When someone is in trouble, help is there. Whether it’s a divorce, money problems, or even a stint in jail, a Palm employee can always go “home” for help – sometimes, quite substantial help,” says Légère Binns.

Foster is excited about the two new London Palm locations opening next year, but knows he won’t be moving there to help them. Palm General Mangers don’t move around much. “It’s all about relationships here. Our customers expect to see me when they walk in, they expect me to recognize them, know their names, know where they like to sit and what they like to eat.” At last count, once-a-week diners made up 21% of the Palm’s business nationwide (approx. 34% higher than the national fine dining average), but Foster estimates the Denver Palm fills up as much as half of its 250 seats with repeat customers.

The Palm doesn’t have a marketing budget, and very rarely advertise. Instead, they rely on what they call “four walls marketing”: marketing from the inside out, through sponsorships and business partnerships, their servers, the 837 Club (see sidebar), printed pieces such as table tents throughout the restaurant, and of course, by word of mouth.
As important as their repeat business is however, he’s eager to set the record straight on the matter of “regular favoritism”, and knows that first timers won’t become regulars if they’re not treated well: “We show everyone the same amount of respect. In fact, we have a rule that a manager or general manager personally welcomes every first time customer and offers to buy them a free dessert.”
Respect is also important to employee retention, and one of the keys to the Palms’ success. “Our staff is our internal customer,” says Foster. “We have an open door policy to keep the communication lines open. We also try to keep things fun with incentives and prizes. We train them well, and have staff meetings every two weeks. We have wine tastings twice a week, where we ask the servers to give presentations on wine to the rest of the staff. Customer service is the #1 priority for our restaurant – with food quality a close second, of course,” he smiles.
The menu, classy, traditional American fare, doesn’t change much - or vary much from Palm to Palm. The Palm buys most of their seafood from North Coast Seafood out of Massachusetts; seafood is caught one day, packed up, shipped overnight, and served the very next day. “All our beef is “prime”, the top 1% of beef,” says Foster proudly. (According to the Food Lovers Companion, ““Prime” refers to the highest USDA beef grade, given to the finest beef, hallmarked by even marbling and a creamy layer of fat. Very little beef makes it past the better hotels and restaurants or prestige
butchers.”)

There are traditional Italian favorites such as Veal Milanese and Clams Oreganata; legendary Palm “name dishes” favored by regulars and usually named after long-time popular employees, such as Steak à la Stone, Gigi Salad, and the Slater Special, as well as daily Chef Specials.

If all this sounds a little too old fashioned, you may be surprised to learn that the Denver Palm’s Executive Chef is Jean Stone – that’s Ms. Jean Stone, thank you very much. Granted, she is the first female Executive Chef at a Palm restaurant, but it’s a sign that one of the ways the Palm Management Group has survived and grown is that they’ve learned when to change with the times, and when to say “Why fix it if it aint broke?”

The Palm created the first “frequent diner” program in the U.S.: the “837 Club” (named after the first Palm location on 837 Second Avenue in NY). $25 to join, members immediately receive a $25 gift certificate to dine at the Palm; each dollar spent on food or beverages thereafter gives the member one point, an average of 12% return; awards range from a $35 Palm gift certificate or copy of The Palm Cookbook (500 points) to a 7-day/6night trip to the Palm of your choosing (30,000 points!) Members are also invited to members-only dinners, and are occasionally given complimentary wine selections, entrees, and “Surprise Bonus Awards”, as well as a free 3-lb lobster certificate on their birthday.

The Palm holds a monthly Wine Tasting Series on the first Tuesday of each month, 5:30-7pm. $15 (plus tax and gratuity) per person includes tasting and food; the small wine class (capped at 30) is led by a rep from National Distributing. October 3: “Cabernets – The King”, November 7: “Taste of Italy”, December 5: “Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles”. RSVP to Wendy Klein at 303.825.1810

Address:
1672 Lawrence Street, Denver 80202
303.825.7256 • www.thepalm.com

Hours:
Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Dinner is served daily on Saturday 5 -11 pm and Sunday 5-10 pm.

For more information, visit www.thepalm.com/837club