Shaw Bijou
· The concept of Shaw Bijou
Unlike other buzzed about dining establishments, The Shaw Bijou won’t have a line around the block and guests won’t be packed into an overly crowded dining room. The restaurant doesn’t even have a menu — just a phone call a few days before dinner to confirm allergies and food preferences. General Manager Gregory Vakiner want diners to feel like they are coming into their friend’s house, and they are just taking care of you. You don’t go to your friend’s house and order food; you go to your friend’s house and they make you a meal. （3）
Shaw Bijou is more like a home kitchen rather than a restaurant. To ensure every customer comfortable, Shaw Bijou is not setting up a lot of seats to ensure each customer have enough space like at home. It only had 9 seats and a small bar.
The owner of Shaw Bijou Onwuachi said, “When you go to your friend’s house, they don’t say, ‘Sit down here for three hours, the bathroom’s that way.’ It’s like, ‘Come to bar. What do you want to drink? Come into the kitchen, let me feed you, let’s go outside, let’s go into the living room.’ We wanted to keep that feel.” This restaurant does not have any menu, no matter the dishes or cocktail. So, when diners arrive to The Shaw Bijou, they are escorted upstairs to a small bar. On Icelandic sheepskin chairs, guests work with the restaurant’s mixologists to make their desired cocktails (again, no menu) and have their first course.
The food and the service are not the only two things given careful attention at The Shaw Bijou. When it comes to the restaurant’s design, no detail was overlooked and no expense was spared, down to the plates, which are made by the local ceramics company Cloud Terre. Furniture maker Caleb Woodard was brought on to construct everything from the carved wooden doors to the table bases. Even the kitchen looks more like one you’d find in a home than a restaurant, with less stainless steel and more stone, wood and other natural elements. Onwuachi’s 200-plus spice collection is displayed on a wooden shelf in clear glass jars.
No matter the restaurant décor or service concept, The Shaw Bijou is hoping to create a feel to diners at home.
· Factors that attracted investors to the Shaw Bijou
1/ Geographical Advantage
The Shaw Bijou was opening at 1544 9TH St. NW. SHAW Community where is the most fashion and popular area in Washington D.C. Shaw is a small neighborhood located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. Named after Shaw Junior High School, a black junior high school located at Seventh and Rhode Island Avenue NW, the Shaw neighborhood has been home to the largest urban population of African-Americans in Washington, D.C. since the 1920s. Shaw Junior High School was named after Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry during the U.S. Civil War. Shaw, centered around U Street NW, has been the hub for African-American social, cultural, and economic progress in the nation's capital, seeing on its...
