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ROSEVILLE, MINN. - The owners of Grand Management, a St. Paul, Minn.-based restaurant management firm, expect their first sports-oriented, talk-radio-theme restaurant, being opened here under a licensing agreement with broadcast giant Clear Channel Commmunications, will be the first of many.
Scheduled to debut in November, KFAN The Restaurant, named for Minneapolis-based Clear Channel's all-sports radio network, will comprise a 350-seat restaurant, five high-capacity banquet rooms, a game room, a 60-foot-long bar - one of the Upper Midwest's largest -and live-broadcast capabilities.
Clear Channel owns more than 1,200 radio stations, including the popular KFAN-AM, whose Fan Network programming airs on nine affiliated stations in Midwestern markets. The company is building a broadcast studio within the prototype restaurant, but Grand Management is putting up $6 million for most of the start-up costs. The restaurant group raised the money from bank loans and private investors.
Kenneth Plunkett, a principal in Grand Management, projects annual sales of the initial restaurant location to grow to at least $10 million within three years. "In our second season, we think we'll be full all the time," he said.
Grand Management, owned by Plunkett and partner Dan Peterson, currently operates the six-unit Sidney's restaurant chain as well as Decoy's Bar & Grill and Tom Reid's Hockey City Pub, all in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
KFAN The Restaurant will be aimed at local and regional...