In an age when business gurus and social media marketers are constantly talking about things like “sticky” content when launching what they hope will be the new Facebook, there still exist real-world business whose content possess a compelling experience that brings you back over and over. Greek diners are as American as apple pie. Operated primarily by Greek immigrant arrivals in the 1960s and 1970s and particularly popular in the northeastern United States, they hold a special place in Americana and in the Greek immigrant experience. Alex Serroukas’s family has been running diners in New York’s Hudson Valley for over forty years.
Serroukas has been involved in the family business since he was a kid. His father and uncle owned a chain of highly-successful businesses since arriving from Nemea, near Argos, in the late 1960s. Serroukas found his entrée into the family business when, while in college, he thought about how to expand beyond the traditional business model. “I had seen the success of chains like Boston Market and decided I wanted to know that business.” Serroukas began working one summer at a Boston Market and by the time he finished his tenure, he was in management. After college his first spin-off venture became Woodstock Chicken, which was a hit. His appetite was whet. He then began work on another successful chain called Coyote Grill. The combination of a upscale Tex-Mex food with a martini culture vibe quickly filled a void that hadn’t been identified in the region.
Serroukas’s crowning success would be found when the family was looking to revamp their basic diner business. His father and uncle were looking to renovate their traditional diners (think rotating Jello and Greek salads) and Serroukas was instrumental in rebooting the old-school Greek diners for the iGeneration into a new modern classic 1950s’ experience. According to Serroukas he had the good fortune to meet architect Morris Nathanson who helped them transition from regular diners into the Everyready chain. Harkening back to a Happy Days vibe, the chain encompassed the iconography of the Fifties from the top down. Serroukas had hit his stride.
These days the family business includes the highly successful Double O, where legendary DJ John Dillinger spins on Friday nights and patrons dress to impress. The newest addition to their chain, The Standard is a culmination of Serroukas’s interest in bringing a 1950s brat-pack vibe and martini-lounge culture to the satellite suburbs of the New York City metro region. I asked Serroukas for his take on a particularly funny quote by Tina Fey in a recent issue of Esquire: There are times I’m on the floor of 30 Rock and I feel like there’s an awareness of who’s going where and who’s doing what. I feel it’s in my blood–that I could have been a hostess at a large Greek diner in New Jersey. It’s a specific set of Greek skills: watching, listening, making change, making sure no one is stealing from you, and smiling at the same time.” Does he think that’s true? Is there something in the Greek DNA? “Absolutely–we also live in an era where the customers are much savvier about food and everything else. Whether through social media or the explosion of food shows on TV–we owe them an experience so that when they are willing to patronize our business–we owe them a compelling experience to keep coming back.”
Now that’s a real social network.