Roy’s offers flavors of Hawaiian fusion cuisine made with fresh local ingredients, European sauces and bold Asian spices.

Premier Business Partners:

William Grant & Sons

In Hawaii, there are two things of equal importance – food and the Aloha spirit. The blending of these two principles is how Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine was born in Honolulu in 1988. The concept for the restaurant – an upscale dining establishment where European sauces and Asian spices meet Hawaiian hospitality – was the brainchild of founder and James Beard Award-winning chef Roy Yamaguchi.  

After the wild success of its flagship location, Yamaguchi opened additional locations throughout the Hawaiian Islands. His first venture on the mainland occurred in the early 1990s when he built Roy’s at the Inn on Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, Calif. Additional locations soon followed in Scottsdale, Ariz.; Newport Beach, Calif.; Bonita Springs, Fla.; and at the New York Marriott Marquis. By 1999, Roy’s had grown his business to 10 restaurants. In 2000, Yamaguchi entered a 50/50 joint venture with OSI Restaurant Partners LLC to develop Roy’s on a global level. Today, Roy’s is comprised of 35 restaurants with locations across the United States and in Tokyo and Guam.

Keeping quality and consistency across such an expansive network of restaurants is accomplished by “tapping the expertise of a very reputable restaurant group and through the good fortune of having a lot of people dedicated to this brand,” President Mark Running asserts.

Director of Chefs/Partner Gordon Hopkins, a 21-year veteran and original chef at Roy’s first location, along with Vice President of Training and Development Leiala Whattoff, a 17-year veteran with the company, have been instrumental in Roy’s success, Running adds. “Being able to duplicate something is one thing, but being able to duplicate our cuisine and dining experience 35 times while keeping the values of the Hawaiian culture is quite another,” he says.

Service With a Smile
Keeping the Hawaiian culture alive in each restaurant starts with its “ohana,” which means family in Hawaiian. Each ohana member serves guests in a caring, friendly and considerate manner. “Ohana is the most important thing in a restaurant,” Running explains. “We look for people who have big hearts and big smiles and who can be true to the culture. A culinary background is of course an advantage, given the complexity of the cuisine, but we spend up to two full weeks training ohana before preparing for an opening. Training is paramount.

“It is incumbent of us that we fill our people’s toolboxes with the tools necessary to be successful,” he adds. “That’s one thing that I emphasize to my senior team – that educating the staff on all aspects of the business is something that never really stops.”

Yamaguchi fosters new interest in foodservice through his own scholarship fund and culinary competition, known as the Aloha Kitchen Challenge. The program started six years ago in Hawaii in celebration of Roy’s 15th anniversary, and has grown to include students from culinary schools in the 48 mainland states. In the Aloha Kitchen Challenge, students are paired with a chef-mentor and compete to win a two-month internship at a Roy’s.

True Culinary Experience
The flavors of Hawaiian fusion cuisine are fresh local ingredients, European sauces, bold Asian spices with an emphasis on fresh seafood, including delicacies from the oceans surrounding Hawaii such as Ono, Opakapaka and Onaga, in addition to hand-cut meats, sushi and fresh shellfish.

The daily menu features a selection of seven of Roy’s Classics – signature dishes that have become international favorites – as well as uniquely designed offerings created by local chefs, each of whom has been trained under the tutelage of Yamaguchi. Chefs are given the autonomy to create fresh dishes daily depending what’s fresh locally. “Our menu is evolving and changing all of the time,” Running notes. “At the end of the day, Roy and Gordon put great trust in the culinary people.”

One of the most popular features of the restaurant is its prix fixe menu, which the company launched five years ago before it was trendy to feature cost-conscious fare on a consistent basis. The $35 prix fixe menu is a mainstay on the menu, although dishes change based on seasonality. For a preset price, guests can select one appetizer, one entrée and one desert from a predetermined menu. According to Running, “It’s the No. 1 selling meal at Roy’s.”

Collection of Restaurants
Each restaurant is designed to provide a unique dining experience through spacious dining rooms, an expansive lounge and Roy’s signature exhibition kitchen in full view. Each Roy’s location is designed to marry with the region, while also staying true to its Hawaiian roots. The art packages, size of the restaurant and some of the flavor profiles of certain menu items are modified to fit each market. The exhibition kitchen centered in the middle of the dining room is consistent across all regions. The open concept gives guests full views of the kitchen, as well as promotes a feeling of openness.

“When Roy designed the first restaurant in 1988, his goal was to have a restaurant that was a gathering place similar to Cheers, where everybody knows your name,” Running explains. “Over the years, we have seen the importance of the display kitchen as an important point of differentiation.”

Reinvesting in its Assets
In 2008, Roy’s successfully opened three new locations in San Diego, Anaheim, and Pasadena, Calif. However, similar to other high-end restaurants in the marketplace, Roy’s has taken a cautionary approach to new development in the current economy. The company kicked off 2009 not by celebrating new openings, but by revisiting those tactics that have made the restaurant successful.

“The most important thing we’ve done is make sure our domestic house is in order,” Running says. “We have invested in training and development in 2009 like never before. At this juncture in the year, we have done retraining events at 20 of our 25 mainland restaurants and will have the remainder completed by Nov. 1.”

In this process, Hopkins and Whattoff, in conjunction with the regional joint venture partner, two visiting chef and two managing partners have visited each restaurant to conduct a three-and-a-half-day review of the food preparation, hospitality and management systems. “If you dig deep enough you can always find something to improve,” Running says. “Overall, we have found that we are doing a great job of providing world-class hospitality. I am a bull on the future of the restaurant industry, and in particular, Roy’s, and we have a great foundation for the future.”