for owners of new Broad St. eatery
Smart real estate deal was key
CHRIS KELLY Red, on Broad Street in Red Bank, is the first restaurant/lounge venture for partners (l-r) Matthew Wagman and Daniel Lynch, who own three successful lounges in New York City.
for owners of new Broad St. eatery
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer
It hasn’t quite opened officially yet, but the buzz being generated by Red is making it hard to get a seat at the new restaurant/lounge on weekends, locals say.
CHRIS KELLY A view of the dining room from the mezzanine dining area takes in the dark woods and muted palette of the interior of Red, a new restaurant and lounge on Broad Street in Red Bank.
Downtown-watchers are witnessing a new scene taking shape at the corner of Broad and E. Front streets in Red Bank where two business partners are expanding on a formula that is behind their three successful New York City ventures.
Open since April for drinks and/or dinner only, Red has seating for 96 in the first-floor dining room and mezzanine level overlooking the dining room. Upstairs, a lounge area served by a large bar features couch seating and a DJ provides background music for a predominately 25-40-year-old crowd.
"The response has been overwhelming," said co-owner Daniel Lynch. "We take reservations and that has helped. It’s the kind of energy we want to create. We don’t want to have 100 people show up and wait three hours for dinner."
"We’re getting a lot of locals," added his partner, Matthew Wagman. "We already have a nice repeat business."
According to the partners, Red is already livening up the nighttime street scene.
"Being on Broad Street is a big plus for any business; there’s a lot of walk-by traffic," noted Lynch. "Retailers are welcoming us and extending their hours because Red is bringing a lot of people down the street. Now, this end of Broad Street is becoming a focal point in Red Bank. All the businesses will feed off it."
In a play on Red Bank, Red takes its name from the town, with a touch of irony. "There’s not a stitch of red in here," Wagman said of the eatery’s sophisticated palette.
Partners in The Vig Bar in Soho, Tribe in the East Village and West 8th in Greenwich Village, Lynch, a Rumson native, and Wagman, reared in Connecticut, met while working on Wall Street in the mid ’90s. Both were building real state portfolios off their earnings in the bond department of a bank when a mutual friend offered them a share in a lounge he was opening in Soho.
Without prior experience, the two took on running the lounge.
"We found out we were pretty good at it," said Wagman. "It was very successful, and we opened three lounges in three years. That was pretty aggressive for two guys new to the industry."
The partners credit their successes to the way they approach business deals. "Every business we do starts out as a real estate deal," Lynch said. "It always comes down to numbers and carrying costs. Every business we do, we approach that way."
According to Lynch, most businesses fail because lease carrying costs are so high entrepreneurs can’t break even.
With three clubs up and running, Red is Lynch’s first real estate purchase. The New York clubs are leased, but Lynch’s company, Danlou Associates LLC, purchased the two vintage buildings at 3-5 Broad St. in 1996 for just over $326,000.
"At that point, it was just an investment. Red Bank was the most undervalued piece of real estate in New Jersey. I got the last great deal on Broad Street. It was good timing."
Lynch planned to maintain the status quo and keep renting the properties when he heard the former Tavern on the Tracks was for sale and bought the pub’s liquor license — a bargain by today’s standards.
With an interest in two New York clubs, holdings on Broad and a liquor license, Lynch left his Wall Street job. Soon after, he called Wagman from the golf course to discuss his future plans. "I told him what I was thinking about doing in Red Bank," Lynch said."
Wagman was ready.
"I was sitting at my desk and I was looking for a way out," he admitted. "We had opened two lounges in New York City with an exit strategy from Wall Street. This was another move in that direction. You never know what the call will look like, but when it comes, you know it."
Unattached at the time, the two were willing to take a risk. Originally, the two planned to translate the concept behind their New York lounges to Broad Street.
"We do a very smart lounge with low-key music for the 25-40 crowd. It’s not at all a very loud bar scene," Lynch explained.
"The design is upscale," Wagman added. "We thought that scene was not represented down here."
Initially, plans called for a lounge on the second floor of 3-5 Broad, Lynch explained, but the plan ran into resistance at the Red Bank Planning Board, and when the restaurant tenant’s lease ran out, the concept evolved.
"We had to change our formula to include a restaurant and we had little experience in owning a restaurant," Lynch admitted.
"It really is what we wanted to do in the beginning. We just added a restaurant to it."
"In fact, we said we would never own a restaurant," Wagman added. "Food operations are a lot harder, more labor-intensive, have higher costs and lower retained earnings."
Lynch did a cost analysis, budget plan, and demographic and feasibility studies.
"It was very thought-out. I spent endless hours going over the numbers. We ate at every restaurant in town, trying to figure out if it would work and decided it would," he said. The next step was to find a chef.
"That was kind of kismet as well," said Wagman, explaining a friend’s recommendation led them to chef Eric Manuelli, formerly of New York’s Gotham Bar and Grill.
"It all fell into place. It was the universe telling us," Wagman quipped.
With a chef steeped in classic American cooking, Red features a new American menu that "gets back to basics," Wagman said. The menu is "built on quality ingredients and food that is simply and beautifully prepared," he said.
"We looked at what was missing," Lynch offered. "People are dying to find a great steak and seafood."
The architectural design by Edward O’Neill Jr. of S.O.M.E. architects, Red Bank, unified the disparate and dilapidated 19th-century buildings. Once begun, Lynch said renovations turned out to be much more extensive than anticipated, requiring the gutting of both buildings.
Design work was handled by the New York office of Wilson Associates, internationally known design firm.
"The level of design is very sophisticated, very New York," Wagman said, "and is not due to any one look but to the fact that every detail is thought out."
Using a muted lavender palette, the design firm added plush velvet curtains and suede walls, dramatic lighting and contrasting dark wood on tables and bars to give Red a young, urbane feel.
"When people leave, they don’t necessarily know why they thought of New York designs, they just know it’s very finished, very polished and very low key," Wagman said.
Making Red accessible was a priority, however, and involved making conscious choices about details.
"We want it to be a place you go to often, not some place you only frequent once or twice a year for special occasions," Wagman explained.
Currently, Red is open Tuesday through Sunday for drinks and/or dinner. Plans are to build up to a seven-day operation within a week or two and to begin offering lunch shortly after. Dinner fare targets a medium price category, with entrees ranging from $20-$28.