Hold on to your logo-laden hats. Corporate America has come to the Gaslamp Quarter. After a few weeks of quietly serving customers who happened by, on Aug. 9 Hard Rock Café International officially opens its doors in Downtown San Diego. Also on Fifth Avenue and not too far behind Hard Rock is another corporate big-boy, T.G.I. Friday's, which opens in three months. Don't forget we’ve already got a Planet Hollywood at Horton Plaza and I’ve heard firsthand that House of Blues is looking hard for a Downtown location.     Did I get hit over the head with a mallet and miss the vote that approved a Downtown ballpark? Did I somehow not know that we will be hosting the next Summer Olympics? These companies are expecting to do some big bucks over the next few years in San Diego. Are we up to it? Will Gaslamp-goers embrace this influx of chain-style entertainment-based venues with open arms? I don’t know, but I wondered enough to get on the phone and call the highest-up person I could get through to at Hard Rock International. It just so happened that my call was taken by president and CEO, Jim Berk from his office in Orlando. I asked him about himself, the company and his feelings about the San Diego market.     I have to admit, I really liked this guy. He is only 38 years old and runs a $400 million a year company. The Gaslamp location will be No. 90 in the chain's worldwide empire. Berk is a cross between Richard Simmons and Tony Robbins and I mean that in the nicest way. He is bigger than life and smarter than most. He is confident, eloquent, arrogant (just a little), passionate, eccentric (more than a little) and uses the words "yep" and "nope" in conversation. He majored in music at California State University at Northridge, "which had the finest teaching program in the country," he says. He then earned his master's degree in administrative education at California Lutheran University. At the age of 26, he was the youngest high school principal in the United States. After a few years, he became the executive director of the National Academy of Recording Sciences. Jim Berk     I asked him how he made the jump to CEO of Hard Rock International. "I was approached, a lot," he says. "I’ve never really looked for a job. I’ve always been approached. Most of the time I don’t even bother calling them back because I’m always so involved with what I’m doing. When this came up I actually told them I was not interested, but that I would be glad to tell them what I think they need to do. They asked if I would meet a person in London, the CEO of the big English company (Rank) which owned Hard Rock. Well, when I met him, I absolutely fell in love with his vision. At that point I was very excited with what his brand was and with what it could be."     So that was it, Jim Berk was basically asked to be the CEO of Hard Rock Café. I found it very interesting that he continually referred to Hard Rock as a brand instead of a restaurant. "To me, a brand is a statement about attitude or an embodiment of a culture. So when you think about, let's say McDonald's or Disney or Hard Rock, that brand hopefully evokes enough emotion to get you to walk through that front door. The brand is what gets you through the door — then you have to produce some value, service and quality product in order to be able to have a returning customer. If the quality of the service, quality of the food, quality of the environment isn’t there, then we don’t deserve to get you back."     Berk says his primary competition isn’t just other theme-type entertainment restaurants like Planet Hollywood, Fashion Café and All-Star Café. "Anywhere you can eat is our competition, and I’ll tell you why," he says. "Our viewpoint is this: all restaurants are themes, all hotels are themes; some are Chinese, some are French. Pick a McDonald's theme; it evokes an emotion and it sets the atmosphere. All Hard Rock did is probably went a little bit more extreme in its theming. The music is a bit louder; the memorabilia is all authentic — the largest collection in the world, in fact, over 40,000 items I think."     Why Downtown San Diego when there's already a Hard Rock Café in La Jolla 20 minutes away? "One of the first things I did when I came on board was put San Diego on the development board," he says. "San Diego is completely distinct from the Los Angeles market, the Newport Beach market — even La Jolla. It has its own identity, its own culture, its own image and we strive to go into locations where they are in a growth boom, which is very much San Diego. A growing presence of cultural identity — about the community; about the businesses in that community."     Berk attends the opening of every Hard Rock Café worldwide. He flies commercial flights and doesn’t believe public companies should own corporate jets. Before winding up in San Diego Aug. 9, he will have made appearances at grand openings in Salt Lake City, Cleveland, Kona, Saipan and Turkey. Berk works one shift a month in one of the restaurants, usually in London. I couldn’t get him to say if he could pass the written server test, but he did say that he was forbidden to work the bar because he makes the drinks too strong. Hard Rock soon will have its own "brand" of beer available in stores and at the Cafés, along with all that fabulous merchandise. Hard Rock merchandise, by the way, accounts for 50 percent of HRC's more than $400 million in annual income — not bad, especially when you look at it as free advertising. Hard Rock Café strongly supports the idea of long-term employees, so every busboy and server has a 401(k) with 50 cents on every dollar matched by the company. After 10 years with the company every employee, no matter what position, receives a Rolex watch. That should make the 150 employees expected to work in the 180-seat restaurant Downtown happy.     I wanted to talk about the food a little bit, because even though Hard Rock Café is a place with tables, chairs and servers where prepared food is sold, curiously the word "restaurant" rarely came up in our 90-minute conversation. So I asked Berk for his favorite menu items. He starts with the nachos, moves on to the hamburger with Swiss cheese and grilled onions and finishes up with the chocolate sundae. (I do like how he eats.)     And then I asked him the question I ask everyone: true or false, love makes the world go round? "Oh absolutely true," Berk says. "That is our motto at Hard Rock: 'Love all, serve all, all is one, take time to be kind, save the planet.'" I don’t know if Jim Berk can save the planet, but something tells me he could own a big part of it if he wanted.

Home | Features | Info | Cover Story | About Us | Back Issues