However, it is a highly speculative business. There is probably as much failure in this industry as in any industry I ve ever looked at. In the short term, it is very fast moving and a lot of it depends on fads, promotions and advertising. You cannot succeed long term without expanding, but you also have to have a very consistent, long-term operating focus. A lot of interesting concepts come and go because they are not executed well.
Execution is probably more difficult than arriving at a viable concept.
In fact, there are viable concepts that come up, and people steal the concept or knock them off and are sometimes more successful than the originator, because they can operate them. I consider Brinker the king of casual dining. The company more or less invented the sector with Chili s. Additionally, Brinker is the only company that has had success with multiple concepts long term. They have had some failures, but for the most part they have had more successes, whether with Macaroni Grill or more recently with Maggiano s, or trying out many of their 10 different concepts in various levels of incubation.