Alas, poor Tad’s, we ate you well.
With the report in the New York Post of the impending close of the last Tad’s Steaks in New York City – and one of only two remaining in the country from what was once a 28-store chain – there are most certainly mixed emotions among many. Perhaps some misplaced hunger pangs too.
For some of a certain age, Tad’s was a special treat in the dining world for those of modest means and somewhat-less-than-discerning taste palettes. Offering steak dinners at seemingly impossible prices – as low as a dollar and change when it first opened in 1957 to anywhere from $9 to about double that with all the trimmings now – Tad’s was a step-up from the fast food world. One can even make the case it was among the first players in what is now called fast casual dining.
Its closing does not exactly come as a surprise to those of us who watched it become increasingly irrelevant on the restaurant scene, an anachronism with its red velvet walls, fake Tiffany lamps and overall garish demeanor. But it didn’t have to end this way.
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It’s pretty clear that people are not eating at restaurants any less than they used to. And the explosion over the past several decades in the fast casual segment – from Outback and Red Lobster down to Chili’s and Panera – would have seemed to have put Tad’s in the right place at the right time. Certainly, decent-if-not-exactly-gourmet steak dinners that could feed a family of four for under 50 bucks is a market position that has proven to be a worthwhile niche for others in the space.
But its failure – perhaps refusal? – to change with the times firmly plants it in a retail world inhabited by the likes of Radio Shack, Pier 1 Imports, Victoria’s Secret, Bed Bath & Beyond and too-many-to-count other businesses that overstayed their once enviable positions in the marketplace.
Retailing – and that includes restaurant and food services retailing – has never been so challenged to keep moving, to stay current, as it is today. The mad dash to home delivery services like GrubHub, Uber Eats and Postmates has only served to accelerate the entire process.
Some people will lament Tad’s passing (even though one restaurant will remain, in San Francisco). No doubt they are likely to have not stepped foot in a Tad’s in 20 years. They remind you of the people who were saddened when Woolworths shut down, ending their famous lunch counters. They too hadn’t sat at those counters since their mothers took them shopping when they were six.
In the end, maybe there’s a little irony that in a year when plant-based wannabe meats are all the rage, we will say farewell to Tad’s. It clearly was a business that was no longer well done.
Date: October 11, 2019
Source: Forbes