Junior's Big Cheese: Interview with Junior's Alan Rosen

If you can't get more American than apple pie, then you can’t get more New York than cheesecake. On the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues in Brooklyn, Junior’s has been serving up what is arguably New York’s best cheesecake since Harry Rosen opened the restaurant in November of 1950.

Since opening its doors, the restaurant has hosted both locals and celebrities such as Robert Kennedy, Barbara Streisand and Norman Mailer. In 1973, the business experienced a major milestone – New York magazine named Junior’s New York’s #1 cheesecake. The recipe was concocted after much research – and tasting – by Harry Rosen and his baker, Eigel Peterson. However, the path to success has not always been smooth. In August of 1981, a three-alarm fire reduced Junior’s to ashes. Rather than close the business, the Rosens leased space from Barton’s Candy Company for their bakery operation and opened a Junior’s Cheesecake kiosk in Albee Square Mall in Downtown Brooklyn. The family reopened their restaurant on the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues in May of 1982.

In 1990, Harry’s grandson Alan graduated from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration]. Alan decided to go out on his own and took jobs managing the Chart House in Alexandria, VA and then Brinker International, a casual dining company that owns several restaurant chains including Chili’s and Macaroni Grill, before deciding to come home and work in the family business. Alan took the reins in 1993 as co-owner of the company. He began the delicate task of introducing a local icon – Junior’s cheesecake - to the rest of the US and abroad.

Today, Junior’s has three additional locations: Grand Central Station (2000), Times Square (2006) and MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut (2008). The New York bakery operation makes more than 7,000 cheesecakes per week and 2,000 of them are for mail-order customers. Since 1992, Alan, now 39, has grown the business from 175 employees to 600.

NY Report editor-in-chief Robert Levin sat down with Rosen to discuss the key to marketing a New York product to the rest of the country and the challenges involved with more than tripling the size of his family’s business.

Brand Is Everything
RL: How has the Junior’s brand evolved over the decades?

AR: Thanks to my grandfather, my father and my uncle, I inherited a strong brand. For one restaurant to have the type of brand recognition that we had was pretty amazing. We’ve been in Brooklyn for fifty-eight years now; that’s fifty-eight years of a great brand. Every time we open a new restaurant or do something new, we have to meet the expectations set by my grandfather, father and uncle. People’s memories of Brooklyn - Junior’s, the Dodgers, the Brooklyn Bridge - are very grand and you have to constantly live up to those memories.

RL: There’s a high percentage of people in New York who know Junior’s. But outside the area, is there less brand recognition?

AR: Absolutely, but figuring out a way to get everyone in America to know about Junior’s does not keep me up at night. I think it will happen naturally over time. But, I don’t think we’re ever going to have five hundred stores. It’s just not who we are. The goal at the end of the day is to run a good company. People will get the message, slowly but surely; it’s a grass-roots campaign. We’re not sending brochures to half a million people. We mail a hundred and eighty-five thousand brochures and maybe next year it’ll be a hundred and ninety-five thousand.

If and when we open up restaurants outside of [the New York area], it will be a big step for us. We’re going to have to have a lot of trust. Whether it’s Florida or Las Vegas, which are definitely two areas we’re thinking about, that’s going to be a big difference. I can’t drive around and spend a day at each store every week.

RL: Why Florida or Las Vegas?

AR: They’re two great locations for us. It helps that a lot of our customers who know us from Brooklyn twenty years ago are there now. If I were to open up a restaurant in a place where no one heard of us, it would be a lot more risky than if I open up in a place where half the population knows about us. We need some goodwill in whatever market we enter.

RL: You sell cheesecakes on QVC. Do you consider that more of a branding opportunity rather than a distribution opportunity?