Motorists passing through Easton on Route 50 might be surprised to learn that the town has anything but fast-food and franchise restaurants.
Panera Bread, Bob Evans and Applebee’s already have packed parking lots, and Olive Garden and Chipotle Mexican Grill are under construction along the commercially-zoned stretch at Chapel Road. A Golden Corral is slated for construction just to the south, and along the Route 322 bypass, Ruby Tuesday’s, Chili’s, Chick-fil-A and McDonalds offer familiar fare to travelers and locals alike.
“Generally, clustering restaurants in one area can help draw overall customer traffic to that area, as long as the restaurants aren’t too similar,” according to Annika Stensson, director of Media Relations at the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C.
Easton’s Mayor Robert C. Willey says that while it appears that the town has reached a saturation point with franchise restaurants, he sees a distinction between those restaurants and the numerous eating establishments in the town’s main business district. Once downtown, it is clear that Easton is a major restaurant destination for the Eastern Shore, with several independent, fine-dining venues.
“There is a difference in the clientele downtown,” Mayor Willey says. “When they go out to eat they tend to go in the evening as opposed to out on 50 where they rush in, have their meal, and then go on. I also think that a lot of the downtown business is coming from some of the night-time activity such as the Avalon Theatre and the Academy of the Arts that may be bringing people in for various shows and exhibits.”
“When we talk about community, we are talking about the entire Talbot County region and probably some portions of Caroline and Dorchester,” Willey says.
Matthew Mason, owner of Mason’s Gourmet on Harrison Street in the heart of downtown, questions how the plethora of franchise restaurants on Route 50 can successfully compete with each other, especially since more are slated to be built.
However, since those restaurants located in outside the Historic District, he does not think that they take away from his business, even though he knows that some of his customers frequent the franchise restaurants on occasion.
Ron Mitchell, owner of the Inn at 202 Dover, says his business has not been affected negatively by the franchises on Route 50 and the bypass.
He noted that his business is “two specific businesses – the restaurant is separate unto itself, and the lodging is separate unto itself.”
Competition from franchise restaurants might be a problem, Mitchell continued, if his restaurant were “more of a pizza restaurant, or a small, inexpensive kind of a restaurant. The diner that opened here, about two years seems to be doing okay every time I drive by.”
Despite all of the restaurants on Route 50, business at 202 Dover is good. When asked about who the customer base for the different restaurants in town might be, Mitchell says, “My sense is that, and I have no way to quantify it, but my sense is that the franchises on Route 50 are frequented by the folks that are coming from Ocean City. That tends to be where the business is; we get very little of that traffic in town itself.”
He says he has gotten some customers who have “converted” and stop off at his restaurant on a Friday or Sunday evenings to have dinner in Easton and miss the traffic rush.
Mitchell noted that there are almost three dozen restaurants serving more than 14,000 people in the Easton area.
“We tend to have somewhat better restaurants,” he says of the downtown. “We tend to have more culture – we have something like 18 art galleries in town, plus the Avalon Theatre, plus the museum, plus the Historical Society, so you have those things working for us, so we attract a different kind of individual.”
He noted that Easton’s Airport is the second busiest airport in the state for corporate jets, after BWI-Thurgood Marshall. “Talbot County has 600 miles of shoreline and that attracts some serious money, so Easton is identified on a per capita basis as the seventh top place for millionaires in the country.”
Though he moved to Easton six years ago, Mitchell is well versed in the area’s rich history. Forty years ago, he says, the town was “a sleepy little village, the attraction was the Tidewater Inn which was a place for two definitive groups of individuals: hunters, who would come out and stay at the Tidewater and go shooting from November through February, and traveling salespeople. That was effectively the only lodging around, except for the Robert Morris Inn, which is over in Oxford.”
Today the Tidewater Inn is still the hub of Easton, Mitchell says, and the site of numerous weddings and corporate events. “The Tidewater was always the place where folks would get dressed up and go for Sunday brunch, no longer (shirt and tie) today, but that’s what they used to do.”
Mitchell doesn’t think that someone getting lunch at a fast food restaurant on Route 50 cuts into his business. “When you really think about the better restaurants in town, be it Scossa, or ourselves, or the Bartlett Pear, or Out of the Fire, it really is not going to have an impact on us.”[slideshow id=43]
[…] #split {}#single {}#splitalign {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}#singlealign {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}#splittitlebox {text-align: center;}#singletitlebox {text-align: center;}.linkboxtext {line-height: 1.4em;}.linkboxcontainer {padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px;background-color:#eeeeee;border-color:#000000;border-width:0px; border-style:solid;}.linkboxdisplay {padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px;}.linkboxdisplay td {text-align: center;}.linkboxdisplay a:link {text-decoration: none;}.linkboxdisplay a:hover {text-decoration: underline;} function opensingledropdown() { document.getElementById('singletablelinks').style.display = ''; document.getElementById('singlemouse').style.display = 'none'; } function closesingledropdown() { document.getElementById('singletablelinks').style.display = 'none'; document.getElementById('singlemouse').style.display = ''; } Restaurant Coupons and Discount Links for Printable Restaurant Coupons and Promotional Savings.San Rafael Fast Food Restaurant Reopens After Bathroom Hazmat ScareSe9 Sensible Dieting Tips For Healthy Eating at Fast Food RestaurantsFranchise and local restaurants give Easton diners a wide variety of choices […]