KaTom Equips Longtime Customer Opening New Location

In helping Kennedy Concepts open Loco Burro, a massive 350-seat eatery with a rooftop dining area and bar at Knoxville's West Town Mall, KaTom Restaurant Supply put out an all-hands-on-deck call. Departments across one of the nation's largest restaurant equipment dealers contributed to the effort to overcome unique challenges and help get the location open.

First, there was the question of how to maximize efficiency in preparing food for that many people. How do you build a kitchen that can meet the demand without sprawling or requiring a huge staff? Once that's answered, similar questions must be faced for service across multiple floors. And how do you create an eatery that feels like a fun house party in a bland box inside a mall?

On top of all that, a global pandemic halted construction for nine months early in the project and spurred supply chain issues that threatened to put the work on hold again. Kennedy Concepts' choice of KaTom would turn out to be a key factor in its ability to push through and open its doors in early 2022.

New Burro, Same Loco

It's important to know this Loco Burro is not the first of its name, nor does it represent the first time Kennedy Concepts Owner Chad Kennedy worked with KaTom. Kennedy has a years-long relationship with KaTom that fostered a deep trust in its capabilities and the dedication of its representatives.

"That relationship with KaTom is very important to us," Kennedy says. "I appreciate how involved they get in our projects. They are very hands on. We have dedicated salespeople we work with, and I like dealing with them because they just make our lives easier."

The original Loco Burro opened in the tourist haven of Gatlinburg, Tenn., in 2011 and has become a popular spot for visitors and locals alike. It's one of a handful of concepts Kennedy operates in the town, with offerings including a Cajun seafood eatery, a sports grill, and a franchise location of the Johnny Rockets burger chain downstairs from Loco Burro. Each is stocked with items purchased from KaTom in part because of its ability to provide unmatched pricing.

"We do shop their competitors; they aren't just guaranteed our business. Ultimately, they do get probably more than 95 percent of our orders because they are so aggressive with their pricing," Kennedy explains.

That first outpost of Loco Burro is known for its chef-crafted menu and lively atmosphere. It features a rooftop bar and dining area with views of the Great Smoky Mountains, funky barstools that make diners look like they have, among other things, the backside of a donkey, and a bucking mechanical burro that justifies the name.

Kennedy knew he wanted to bring many of those iconic fixtures and furnishings to liven up the Knoxville location, which moved into what was formerly a Forever 21. The comical barstools are there, as is Knoxville's own bucking burro. Both locations are also filled with custom fixtures and decorations chosen by Kennedy.

But, he didn't want to just recreate the Gatlinburg location at the mall.

"We learned a lot of lessons in Gatlinburg that we were able to put to use here to make the whole operation run better," Kennedy says. "Those changes and some different equipment from KaTom enabled us to basically double our output at this location."

Chief among those changes are a new service area for the rooftop bar and dining area and some massive cooking pieces in the main kitchen. The menu is also chef-redesigned and refined, as Kennedy puts it, with options such as ceviche and tequila flights added.

And, despite all the neon and the burro and the massive mural painted by a local artist, the mall location is a bit more understated than the one that competes with countless flashy tourist attractions in Gatlinburg. Kennedy envisioned the new space with a Spanish-villa vibe, complete with custom tile work on the floors.

Viva La Rooftop

The rooftop dining area and bar is a beautiful space, with a hulking tilework feature with flames leaping out of a pool of water and tables with built-in fire pits that make them useful for more of the year. It seats about 160 people and Kennedy's expectations about its popularity have been proven true since the eatery opened in mid-January 2022. Even on cold days, guests have braved long waits to enjoy what's believed to be Knoxville's only rooftop dining space outside of downtown.

At the Gatlinburg location, the kitchen staff loads plated food into a dumbwaiter that takes it to the bar on the roof, where it's collected and distributed to the tables by servers. The process is slow, since the dishes can only be sent up in small batches and everything from baskets of chips to entrees has to make the transit.

In Knoxville, the rooftop has its own service area just off the main floor, complete with cold storage for chilled sauces, condiments, and ingredients used for finishing entrees. There is also hot holding equipment that can be used to keep popular items at the ready and stage dishes until a full order is ready. Additionally, there's an ice machine and even a chip warmer among the equipment there.

The space is accessible via an elevator unseen by guests that enables staff members to move large volumes of food between the two levels. That convenience makes a huge difference in the restaurant's ability to serve tables faster, which means higher guest satisfaction and increased turns.

"The two-story location in the mall made this a unique project and there were some challenges to getting equipment up to the second floor," KaTom Regional Account Manager Mike Knoebel says. "We were able to store most of the equipment at KaTom and kept some of it at an on-site container so it was all ready when the building was."

"Our installers used a lift to haul equipment across the parking lot and into the restaurant. Our installers delivery and install team was able to use a lift to get those pieces where they need to be. They were also on-site when the walk-in was delivered to ensure it was set up correctly."

KaTom Delivers for Kennedy Concepts

Feeding 350 guests—and the restaurant stayed on a multi-hour wait for weeks after opening and still gets one at meal times—requires equipment more like that found in institutional kitchens in most restaurants. That includes huge tilt skillets the restaurant could use for sauteing fajita toppings in bulk and braising beef for its birria de res and a steam kettle that can cook and hold chile con carne at the ready.

KaTom's extensive experience working on large projects such as this one make it a great choice for operators building a facility of this size. From design to install, its teams have the capability to take on big jobs and help operators push into the next level of business. In this case, Knoebel and the outside sales support team worked with manufacturers' representatives to design or specify pieces from custom beer towers and frost rails for the bars to stock chip warmers.

Kennedy's vision for the back-of-house at the second location included a split kitchen – one side for prep and cooking and another mainly for finishing and plating. There's also the separate prep and staging area upstairs stocked with equipment such as a refrigerator, ice maker, and chip warmer that keeps foods fresh and ready.

That space is served by a full-size elevator that connects the downstairs and upstairs back-of-house areas and provides service options not available at the Gatlinburg location.

Beyond the food areas, the restaurant is also outfitted with two expansive bars, both filled with custom glassware hand selected by Kennedy. There, bartenders offer cocktails, shots, and more than a dozen draft beers, including the Tex Mex Lager Kennedy and Kennedy Concepts Marketing Director Brittany Singh developed in collaboration with East Tennessee's Yee-Haw Brewing Co. It's built on the foundation of a traditional cerveza-style beer, with an amber color and more malt than detected in many lagers, and is only available at the company's restaurants.

Creating all those prep and service spaces took a lot of equipment and, as Knoebel says, much of that equipment, along with other FF&E and smallwares, spent time at KaTom. Some of it was even there during the nine-month pandemic pause.

KaTom was able to receive shipment from manufacturers and stage those items at its facility until the eatery was ready to receive it, leaving the space clear for construction and taking the headache of managing those orders off Kennedy. This is good news because supply chain issues related to the pandemic made it impossible to anticipate when needed pieces would arrive.

The project also benefited from KaTom's extensive manufacturer and vendor partnerships throughout the restaurant equipment industry, as well as its ability to adapt and find new avenues to fulfillment.

"We ran into challenges with supply chain as the equipment for this project was being ordered and installed," Knoebel says. "In several cases, such as the walk-in and bar equipment, we had to look at alternative manufacturers that could hit our lead time requests. We also had to deliver equipment in stages based on availability."

"Especially with COVID, it was just tough to get everything we needed when we needed it," Kennedy explains. "I had in my head what brands I wanted for a lot of the equipment, but if something wouldn't be available when we needed it, the team at KaTom helped guide us to a replacement that would."

It's hard for a project that was paused for nine months to be said to open on time, but despite all the unexpected challenges, Kennedy was able to set and meet an opening date in early 2022. According to Kennedy, its ability to hit the new mark is in part thanks to the KaTom teams.