Prolific franchise firm Doherty Enterprises, which owns and operates Applebee’s and Panera Bread among others, is bringing a new restaurant concept to Long Island.
The Allendale, N.J.-based franchisee will soon be opening the Island’s first Jinya Ramen Bar in Lake Grove with another to follow in Massapequa Park.
The company’s first Jinya location will be a 5,000-square-foot restaurant in a pad site building at 3190 Middle Country Road in the DSW Plaza shopping center. The new eatery is expected to open in January.
Founded in Tokyo in 2000, Jinya was brought to the U.S. in 2010 by founder Tomo Takahashi with a restaurant in Studio City, Calif., the Jinya Ramen Bar chain has more than 75 locations opened across the U.S. with 170 more in development, according to the company’s website.
Doherty Enterprises, which has so far opened a Jinya Ramen Bar restaurant in Totowa, N.J. and has another in the works in Hackensack, N.J., plans to eventually open 25 of the chain’s eateries throughout New York and New Jersey, including several on Long Island.
Tim Doherty, president and COO of Doherty Enterprises, says the company’s latest franchise venture is unique.
“Jinya is different from what we have done in the past. It’s upscale casual dining,” Doherty told LIBN. “There are certainly ramen shops in and around the New York metro area and Long Island, but I think our food is superior, and I think our environment is far superior, and it really is something I think our guests are going to love.”
The menu at Jinya Ramen Bar features a wide variety of ramen noodle dishes, appetizers, sushi, salads, rice bowls, mini tacos and more. So far, the concept has proved popular, as the chain reports an average restaurant volume of $3 million.
Besides the Jinya location in Lake Grove, another one is being built in Massapequa Park, where a building that formerly housed a TGI Fridays restaurant at 5204 Sunrise Highway in the Sunrise Promenade shopping center is being redeveloped to accommodate two new tenants, including a 4,600-square-foot Jinya Ramen Bar and a 3,000-square-foot Shake Shack.
“We had a choice to leave it as a full-service restaurant, but the quick-service and fast-casual restaurants are more profitable today,” Cliff Sondock, a principal of Sunrise Promenade owner Spiegel Associates, told LIBN.
Sondock said Sunrise Promenade is a great location for a new franchise like Jinya. He said the 166,000-square-foot center, anchored by a Whole Foods Market and Hobby Lobby, was recently ranked among the top 2 percent of shopping centers in the country for customer traffic and sales per square foot, according to Placer.ai.
As one of the area’s most successful franchisees, Doherty Enterprises owns and operates 57 restaurants on Long Island, including 21 Applebee’s, 35 Panera Bread and a Spuntino Wine Bar & Italian Tapas. All in all, the company operates eight brands totaling 159 restaurants and 15 Sola Salons.
While it’s still in its early stages, Doherty has ambitious plans to grow the Jinya franchise.
“There is no reason that we can’t own and operate 25-plus restaurants throughout New York and New Jersey. We have a portion of Connecticut, a little bit of upstate New York, a little bit of Pennsylvania,” Doherty said. “Over the course of that geography, there’s no reason why we can’t build 25 or more of these restaurants. We’re just at the beginning of our journey with it, but I’m very excited and very encouraged with the future based on what I’ve seen so far.”
Tom Rettaliata and Brian Schuster of RIPCO Real Estate represented Doherty Enterprises in the Lake Grove and Massapequa Park lease Jinya transactions and RIPCO’s Jeff Howard represented Shake Shack in the Massapequa Park lease. Etan Shalem of Welco Realty represented the landlord, Prestige Properties, in the Lake Grove Jinya lease, and Sondock served as in-house representative for the landlord, Spiegel Associates, in the Massapequa Park leases.
