Maxim is going into the food business.
It is planning to lend its name to a chain of restaurants in the US.
The first of 15 steakhouses is expected to open next Spring. The rest over the next five years.
The chain is being launched in partnership with a food and restaurant company called Jeffrey Chodorow's China Grill Management. The restaurants will be called Maxim Prime.
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The deal is part of part of a plan by Dennis Publishing to license the name of its best known magazine for other ventures. It has already put its name on shower curtains, furniture and, according to a report in USA Today, on a soon-to-be-built casino.
The restaurant chain, according to CEO Stephen Colvin, will be designed to appeal to customers in their twenties and thirties – which is roughly the age of most Maxim readers.
Dennis Publishing, he added, will get a percentage of the profits.
Although Maxim is known for its scantily clad women, the same won''t be true in the restaurants., There is no plan to emulate Hooters, a chain of restaurants here known for its waitresses in low-cut blouses and short skirts. Maxim Prime will, its claimed, be more upscale.
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"Sexy but sophisticated" was how Jeffrey Chodorow founder of the company which will manage the restaurants put it.
The food – particularly the steaks – will not be oversized as they in many American steakhouses, which tend to leave customers bloated and sleepy.
"Our customers, after eating, will probably go someplace else – maybe dancing", he added. "They are not going to go home and go to bed".
Maxim, with a circulation of 2,600,000, is rated among the top 25 magazines in the US. But while subscriptions have been climbing (up 6.5 per cent in the first six months this year) newsstand sales have declined about 14 per cent. Ads are also down.
All of which is leading many magazines in the USA to seek other sources of income.
Time Inc's Real Simple for example has launched a line of cleaning tools and home office supplies, sales of which have already topped $10 million.
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