How Hugh Hefner's Favorite Restaurant Became A Surprise Hit With Millennial Customers

Customers today are highly sociable when they shop, dine, and purchase. This is true of the 80 million millennial customers (born 1980ish-2000ish), and it's true of older shoppers as well-–who, more and more, are developing a technologically informed outlook similar to that of the millennials.

Millennial customers are the most likely of any generation to shop, dine and travel with groups, whether these are organized interest groups, less formal groupings of peers or excursions with extended family, according to Boston Consulting Group data. Online, their sharing habits on Facebook, Snapchat and other social sites, and the opinions they offer on Yelp, TripAdvisor and Amazon reflect their eagerness for connection, as do their electronic alerts to friends and followers (via Foursquare et al.) that show off where they are, where they’re coming from and where they’re headed—online alerts that reflect and affect behavior in the physical world.

And, I would argue, this preference for a shared experience is spreading rapidly to their elders; as evidenced, for example, by the many affinity groups that travel and dine together, the ease with which they meet up being almost entirely thanks to connective internet and mobile technology. Connective technology has also fueled the craze in every demographic for visual sharing, such as shooting foodographs to visually share the food and plating with offsite friends before ever taking a bite of dinner.

This customer passion for shared consumption is the reason that certain brands, including– surprisingly!–the venerable Melting Pot restaurant chain, are well-positioned for success with millennial customers. If you can build an inescapably social experience you’re going to do well among customers today.  And dinner at The Melting Pot is exactly that: an inescapably social experience. Diners share everything at the table: the cheesy, or chocolately, fondue, the pots of boiling bouillion in which to cook the food, the protein options that are spread on cutting boards around the table.

I spoke with Bob Johnston, the CEO of Front Burner Brands, the restaurant group that owns and manages The Melting Pot restaurants, recently, and his pride in the growth of his company is palpable. He started with The Melting Pot as – I kid you not – a dishwasher and rose to CEO in 1995, growing the company to an extraordinary 132 locations today. He describes his philosophy of leadership as simple, yet unwavering: “I focus on treating our employees well, so they’ll treat our customers well. If you ignore the first part of the equation, you’ll never get to the second.”

The Melting Pot will probably never be (o.k.:  will definitely never be) the hippest of restaurant brands, and it would be silly to suggest that it’s much of a foodie destination or a hangout for locavores. Yet among its fans it’s truly beloved; fans that, in my very incomplete and informal survey, skew relatively young, which is especially surprising considering its significant price point. The Melting Pot chain recently won the 2015 Nation's Restaurant News Consumer Picks: No. 1 Casual Dining Restaurant and CEO Johnston spun me tale after tale of couples and families and affinity groups who come back time after time because they’ve connected with the restaurant as being “their” place.

On top of all this, The Melting Pot remains, famously, Hugh Hefner’s favorite restaurant, with the restaurant even starring in its own reality-TV episode featuring Hef and his, uh, mates on a night out, which in itself is an illustration that The Melting Pot is built for sharing, and its success as a sharing platform is what’s behind its success as a business.

The long-over fondue craze itself coincided with and was fueled by the sexual revolution (according to food historian David Sax); the idea being that you could have a party and quickly become somewhat intimate with (and perhaps, only a little later, very intimate with) a small group of friends.  Though that key party era has passed, the sharing aspect of the way Melting Pot arranges its meals continues to be central to its success.

And it’s not just that you share everything—the plates of proteins, the boiling water, the close proximity and rubbed shoulders that are inevitable in the close, comfy booth arrangement of the restaurants. It’s that you share in a “project,” of sorts: There’s a real DIY element of dining together at The Melting Pot: you, your group of guests, are responsible for cooking (boiling, really) the proteins of your choice for the length of time – hopefully beyond an e coli danger point – that suits you.  This shared project aspect may sound trivial but I don’t think it is in terms of guest enjoyment.

So what lessons does The Melting Pot’s unlikely success in today’s marketplace hold for your business and your own quest to woo the customers of today and tomorrow? Here are a couple.

1. Build your business for sharing.  This is a key lesson for our time.  Whatever your business (except, perhaps, if you offer STD testing or run a proctology practice), build in opportunities for your customers to share, online and offline, before, during, and after their experience at your business. For an example far removed from foodservice, look at Nike+ and the ease with which it allows you to turn your use of sneakers–of all things–into something socially shareable
2. Build in DIY elements.  Customers are more invested in a customer experience–in enjoying it, in sharing it–if they have some hand in creating what is ultimately consumed.
3. Don’t chase trends, and don't assume you’re not trendy enough for millennials and other active customers of today. The fondue craze is long, long gone and I don’t think it’s coming back, ever.  Yet within its niche – and 132 successful restaurants point to a sizable niche– The Melting Pot has sustained itself and grown without significant trouble, even during the height of the Great Recession, when business slowed but never in an existence-threatening way.  Not everyone will ever like your business, whatever it is, but that doesn’t preclude a core group from keeping you happily in business for a sustained time.

Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, customer experience speaker and bestselling business author, most recently of the new Forbes Signature Series eBook on customer service for millennials, Your Customer Is The Star