Margaret Suran > wrote:
>Don Shula, the great football player and later the legendary coach of
>the Miami Dolphins has very successful restaurants in Miami and also

Buddy Ryan's son had a place in Phoenix when Buddy
was the coach of the Cardinals. I never went, and
apparently neither did anyone else.

Steve Stone, announcer for the Cubs, opened a "Mexican"
restaurant a mile or so from me. Worst Mexican food and
most disastrous service I've ever encountered. I hear
he owns several other places in Phoenix (there's a heavy
Chicago/Phoenix cross-pollination, due mostly I believe
to Motorola, which is a Chicago-area giant and was a huge
employer here as well for decades, but now owns almost
nothing in Phoenix).

Dan Majerle's downtown bar & grill is still very successful.

It's a few blocks from Alice Cooper'stown, which is more
associated with the baseball park, but physically closer
to the basketball arena.

Celebrities get into restaurants because they have lots
of spare cash to "invest", and restaurant concepts are
easy to sell, just point to all the super-successful ones,
the thousands of break-even ones in any town, and try not
to go near mentioning the 30-50% that crash and burn in
their first year. Then you hit them with "all you do is
put some of your money into it, then we use your name to
help market it." Few celebrities can resist the ego-boost
of thinking right then, "yeah, my name will be the most
valuable asset you have."

--Blair