AND NOW here is tomorrow's weather forecast for the Yau Yat Chuen area: there will be early mist, followed by light rain, occasional flashes of lightning and some thunder. This will occur at 20-minute intervals in an area known as the Rainforest Cafe at the new Festival Walk mall, at Kowloon Tong. The thunderstorm warning is likely to stay in effect for - well, forever, if Steven Schussler has his way. Schussler is the creator of the Rainforest Cafe which, according to his parrot-shaped, recyclable plastic namecard, is 'A Wild Place to Shop and Eat', a phrase which is followed by a warning little R in a circle. So, too, are the unremarkable words underneath: 'An Environmentally Conscious Family Adventure'. Obviously, it's a legal swamp out there in the land of theme restaurants.
I'd like to have experienced this wild adventure for myself but unfortunately the cafe wasn't quite ready so we met in the sunny pastures of the Marriott's lobby. Schussler had brought along his Hong Kong managing director and licensee, J. R. Robertson, and the pair of them vied with each other to see who could be more thrilled with the concept. Schussler set the tone, when I casually asked how everything was going, by replying 'Phenomenal!', which made J. R.'s 'Great!' sound positively reticent.
Schussler is 43 and used to talking things up. He's the sort of man who holds your hand for a long time while he's being introduced and looks meaningfully into your eyes and leans forward with a merry twinkle - in other words, he's an American businessman of remarkable determination who has spent many years flirting with potential investors. The Rainforest Cafe concept rose in 1994 from the ashes of another restaurant project called Jukebox Saturday Night - the end was 'very disturbing, very painful' - so he had to sweet-talk an awful lot of people who were naturally reluctant to back a registered bankrupt.
He managed this by building a rainforest in his Minneapolis home and inviting potential investors in to view it. I was impressed with the tale - at one point he had 40 tropical birds, two turtles and a baboon called Charlie roaming around, and the Drug Enforcement Agency on his doorstep, wondering if he was cultivating marijuana since his electricity bill was the highest in the state of Minnesota - but the truly incredible fact is that, 26 Rainforest Cafes later, Schussler has still never been to a tropical rainforest. He could see that I was faintly reeling from this information and added, 'I've been to a temperate rainforest, in Canada, and my mother lived in Ecuador for three years, with the peace corps.' Anyway, inspired by his love of tropical birds (he still has eight at home), he read a lot of books and he learned how to change Charlie's nappies. I asked for a demonstration and he did a creditable imitation of what it's like to pin down a wriggling baboon, murmuring, 'That's why I don't have children'. When I looked up, interested, he said quickly, 'No, no, I don't have children because I don't have time and I'm not married.' Perhaps it's just as well: Charlie is now in a zoo. 'We realised it wasn't in the best interests of people to have captive primates in the restaurant. It was a stupid idea on my part.' Butterflies were also deemed a no-go idea (they landed on the food and proved distressingly mortal) and the turtles ponged, so animatronics, including Tracy the Talking Tree, along with live birds and tropical fish, became the way forward. Except in Hong Kong. 'We're going to wait for another year for the birds because of what happened, we're sensitive about bringing them in,' said Schussler.
'Bird 'flu,' explained J. R, in an aside. I had a feeling that problems could also arise when everyone here starts selecting the tropical fish for their supper, but no doubt they'll eventually iron out such cultural confusions. In any case, there are local additions to the menu, alongside such favourites as Gorillas in the Mist cheesecake and Jurassic Chicken Tidbits. 'Singapore noodles, that sort of thing, to attract the whole family,' said J. R, whereupon the pair simultaneously chimed, 'From three to 103' which, apparently, is the target age range.
I wondered, seeing as how beef is popularly supposed to be a prime reason for the devastation of the world's rainforests, whether Schussler had ever thought of making his restaurant vegetarian. Schussler adopted a serious expression. 'Never. Remember one thing: this concept is not pure. Environmentalists say we don't do enough, they say 'How come you don't donate more money, how come you're profitable?' Let me tell you, we're proud of being profitable, we're profitable 30 days after opening and I'm proud to tell the shareholders that.' 'And we do donate some money,' J. R. put in. 'US$150,000 (HK$1.2 million) per location on outreach educational programmes per year - that's unheard of.' 'Seventeen years went into developing this,' sighed Schussler. 'And all those years people told me I was a nut.' Is he? 'You'll have to determine that for yourself. But you know what they say about the fox.' I was a bit thrown by this sudden introduction of an animal from the northern latitudes so I said no, and Schussler murmured, significantly, 'Dumb like a fox.' Then he added that his whole concept had 21 commandments - God's 10, the five senses, the five Es (Entertainment, Education, Environment, Earnings, Employees) and a capital P for Passion. 'People say 'give us a good example of passion' and I say, okay, a server goes to the toilet and he sees that the toilet next to his hasn't been flushed because someone else didn't take the time to flush it. So he flushes it too. That's passion.' I think it was around this point that I realised that if I was waiting for Schussler to crack and fall sobbing to his knees as a prelude to revealing the heart-searing downside of the restaurant business, I could be sitting in the Marriott for a very long time. So I started to say goodbye when J. R. suddenly said, 'Let me ask you one question, Steve, it's such a good question that somebody else asked, I'd like to ask it again: aren't you thinking of other ideas at this time?' Obviously, I felt a bit crushed that I hadn't asked this myself especially when Schussler nodded thoughtfully, and said, 'That's a great question, J. R. My answer before was really frank because what licensees want to hear is that I'm really focused. The nice thing about my chairman, Lyle Berman, is that he's determined to let me continue research and development into new products, new animatronics. We're going to do comic books, a TV show eventually, we're creating a brand all around Rainforest Cafe.
