Could Matchbox become the next Cheesecake Factory?

There’s no sign outside Matchbox restaurant’s test kitchen. It’s tucked away in a stretch of personality-free warehouses in Silver Spring. The compact room features everything you’d find in the full-scale kitchens of the popular D.C.-based chain best known for its pizzas and mini burgers. There’s a brick pizza oven, glass door refrigerator, deep-fryer, flattop stove, grill, range, a pair of counters and a sink. A window on the far end looks into the Matchbox man cave — well, conference room — outfitted with a small artificial-turf putting green and an impressive flat-screen TV mounted on a wall of reclaimed barn wood.

Stephen Lyons, vice president of culinary operations for Matchbox Food Group, is moving around the tight kitchen space with a quick, studied efficiency. He’s preparing a selection of new dishes for a tasting, but he has more than Washington on his mind. Matchbox Food Group is about to launch a national expansion.

[Try two recipes from Matchbox: Chickpea Fries and Crab Cakes.]

The chain already owns 12 restaurants in the D.C. area — in addition to the six Matchboxes, there are five Ted’s Bulletin bistros and Barracks Row hot dog joint DC-3. Next up: a Matchbox in Sunrise, Fla., just west of Fort Lauderdale.

Lyons came on board late last summer to help the group update its menu for the expansion.

“Some people think, ‘Oh, Matchbox is only burgers and pizza,’” says Lyons as he arranges beet wedges for a salad that also includes homemade ricotta, candied pecans and a citrus vinaigrette. “We know we do those things well, but we are so much more than that. I want to break the stereotypes about what people believe happens at this level of dining. It’s about bringing them refined simplicity.”

Lyons knows quite a bit about refinement. He has two decades of fine-dining experience under his apron, including three years each as the executive sous-chef at the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia and the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts in Kona, Hawaii.

“There are no pretentious ingredients here,” he says as he assembles the salad. “It’s really well-done preparation, and the execution is fast. We want to do elevated food at an affordable price.”

Today’s tasting will also include prosciutto-crusted pan-seared branzino, a riff on a Niçoise salad and an apple-and-root-vegetable salad with honeyed Greek yogurt and crushed toasted hazelnuts tentatively named “Shades of White.” Not a single burger or pizza will make an appearance.

Lyons is just one element of the formula to take the chain national.

“We have systematically assembled a team that’s gotten us ready to do this,” says 53-year-old Ty Neal, co-founder of Matchbox Food Group along with his brother, Mark Neal, 42, and 44-year-old Drew Kim. (A fourth founder, Perry Smith, left the company in 2012.) “Peter was the game changer.”

Peter is Peter D’Amelio. The seasoned restaurant industry veteran has an impressive set of credentials, including stints as the former president and chief operating officer of the Cheesecake Factory and president of Northern Virginia-based Great American Restaurants. He joined the Matchbox Food Group as chief operating officer in January of last year. D’Amelio has a lot of experience taking restaurant concepts national. When he started at Cheesecake Factory as a manager, it had three locations. When he left as the head of the company, there were 153.

He ticks off the three reasons for planting a Matchbox flag in the Sunshine State: “There’s no state income tax; it’s easier to get staff and managers there, because people want to live down there; there’s a lot of real estate available.”

Even before he began working with Matchbox, D’Amelio was a patron and fan of the restaurant he says could be successful across the country. “It has potential to become an iconic brand,” he says.

The Sunrise location is Saw-grass Mills mall. It’s set to be the largest Matchbox yet, measuring 11,000 square feet with more than 300 seats. Price tag: $5 million.

The money comes from a group of approximately 100 friends and family investors; bank loans; and financial enticements from the mall’s developers. If all goes according to plan, the upscale- casual restaurant will be ready for guests early next year. The current game plan is for Matchbox to open four to seven new locations a year after its expansion to Florida. Already the restaurant group is looking at opportunities in Texas and California. Once this phase of the expansion process is complete, the group will start expanding Ted’s Bulletin into areas where Matchbox has a toehold.

“It’s a leap, because a lot of people don’t know us in these new markets,” admits Ty Neal, “but we want to get our feet wet. Plus, we’re out of space to put more Matchboxes around here.”

It’s an ambitious plan, but Matchbox Food Group has already proved its chops in the capital region. The company now employs 1,130 people here.

It would have been hard to imagine this level of success when co-founders Ty Neal and Drew Kim first met in 1990 in Huntington, W.Va., at Mycroft’s, Neal’s first restaurant. A 100-seat eatery-bar adjacent to the Marshall University campus, perched between the basketball arena and the football stadium, Mycroft’s “was a Cheers-type place,” he says. “Kinda kitschy, but a great spot.”

Kim came in looking for a waiter job, but Neal told him that he didn’t hire men. “You could say that in the ’90’s,” says Neal.

But Kim persisted. On his fourth visit, Neal relented. It turned out to be serendipitous for both of them. Kim rose through the ranks, going from server to bartender to manager and, ultimately, partner. The pair also owned a cafe, the Drop Shop, which had a live music venue in the back. “Our claim to fame was [British new wave band] Flock of Seagulls” played there, says Neal.

Share this articleShare

Ultimately, they sold those businesses and joined forces with Ty’s brother, Mark Neal, and Perry Smith, Ty’s longtime friend. In 1996, the four opened a location of the retro bar Polly Esther’s in Chicago and ran it for five years before selling it.

In 2002, they obtained the space for what would become the original Matchbox in Washington’s Chinatown. Low on funds, the partners built most of the restaurant themselves. Their DIY attitude continued after they opened. “Drew bartended, I worked the front door and Mark made pizza,” says Ty Neal. “It was a grassroots effort all the way.”

Chinatown was not the booming, built-up hub it is today, so opening in that neighborhood was a risk. The restaurateurs persevered, earning a passionate following and critical praise. The turning point came when Tom Sietsema reviewed the restaurant enthusiastically for The Post in July 2003. “That’s when it started going,” says Neal. “There were lines out the door.”

The partners had always planned to expand. A second location opened on Barracks Row in 2008. It was followed by a third in Rockville in 2010 and another on 14th Street two years later. The seventh is set to open in Ashburn, Va., at the end of this year.

There was one sidebar to this regional growth. The partners opened a Matchbox in Palm Springs, Calif., in 2005 as a one-off joint venture with another restaurant group. Though they say they wouldn’t do any similar business deals, the Palm Springs location has taught them a few valuable lessons. “We probably won’t go into another seasonal market again,” says Kim. “On the upside, it’s allowed us to see how our systems work remotely, so it has allowed us to prepare for growth.”

Kim and company are hardly the only area restaurateurs stepping up their game to the national level. Five Guys now has more than 1,000 locations spread across the country. “Top Chef” breakouts Mike Isabella and Spike Mendelsohn have opened eateries outside the D.C. area and have plans to launch others. And keep an eye on the teams behind Cava Mezze Grill and Taylor Gourmet, both aiming to expand outside the area in the next year or two. “You’ll see a lot of a exciting restaurant brands launching in D.C.,” predicts Nicolas Jammet, co-founder of Sweetgreen, which has locations in Philadelphia, New York and Boston with new eateries opening in Los Angeles in late spring or early summer. “There’s a lot of thought leaders here and great customers who are educated and understand food.”

Sarah Lockyer, editor in chief of Nation’s Restaurant News, sees regionally successful restaurateurs make the same fatal mistake when they take a shot at cross-country success: “Selling out by growing too fast and getting greedy,” she says. “If the founders don’t watch their concept like a hawk as it grows, it will diminish, and the reasons why it became successful will fall away.”

One way in which the Matchbox team hopes to make its expansion restaurants feel like a heartfelt, homegrown concept is through its design aesthetic. “We’re not going to go to a catalogue and order anything with a model number,” says Kim. “Our goal is to keep this as authentic and rustic as possible as we grow.”

Says director of architecture Jennifer Jaffke, who acts as a liaison between Matchbox’s principals and the architects, contractors and vendors who build their restaurants: “It’s very important it doesn’t feel cookie cutter. Authenticity is one of the words you’ll hear most frequently in our design meetings. We want to keep the materials true to what they are and keep Matchbox true to what it is.”

Though each future location will be built to accommodate site-specific considerations, there will be shared signature elements. Diners can always expect to find reclaimed-barn-wood walls, a giant flaming torch outside the front door, a bar overlooking the pizza ovens, booths suspended over the main floor and built-from-scratch glass-topped tables showcasing vintage matchboxes. The founders built the first tables for the restaurant in Mark Neal’s basement. They still decide which matchboxes will be featured, choosing from the thousands they have collected, bought and been sent by patrons over the years.

A certain glee slips into Ty Neal and Kim’s voices as they discuss that selection process. For a moment, they seem less like serious restaurateurs about to embark on the most ambitious venture of their professional lives and more like kids who have been handed the keys to the candy store. “We just want to have fun,” says Kim. “I don’t want us to ever get so entrenched that it’s no fun anymore.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the price tag of the Matchbox that will open in Sawgrass Mills mall. It will cost $5 million.

Martell is the author of several books; his most recent is "Freak Show Without a Tent." On Twitter: @nevinmartell.

Matchbox Chickpea Fries

Matchbox Crab Cakes

Menu confusion: Plates of all sizes befuddle diners

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLmqssSsq7KklWSzsLvDaJqorZyZeq6t05yfm6eoYq%2Bmr86mnGasmJp6r7HXrWScoJWawKavwKScZp6RmMGwvthoaWlpZWR9c3uRamZvamJqsXh9j2aZb5thYn5ysZNmcG1qY2KzdLCPmmiem2NogqSr0q2mq7FencGuuA%3D%3D