Securing The Hard Rock Cafe

Photo by Von Kantor & Associates
Senior facilities manager Howard Long oversaw a program that created global standards for fire protection and security at restaurant and retail company Hard Rock Cafe.

When you talk security and life-safety to Howard Long, senior director of facilities for the global restaurant chain Hard Rock Café, you can talk all you want about gigahertz and megabytes, but that's not what his ears want to hear. "When we talk security or life-safety, it's about helping us with our business need," explains Long.

Long, who was in Hollywood , Fla., yesterday at the company's café in the same-named Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, as a guest of ADT Security Services – the integration business which, incidentally, recently won the contract to supply Hard Rock Café with all of their security and life-safety needs. Like his quote above indicates, he's very focused on the business-level goals as he thinks about security. Part of that awareness probably comes from the fact that Long has to think globally.

Having started in London in 1971, Hard Rock Cafés now span the globe from Melbourne, Australia , to Berlin, Germany. And along with that global expansion, the company has become a "trusted brand" – people trust it enough to the point that the Hard Rock Café T-shirt is the ubiquitous souvenir (and chief marketing item, as it flashes around the world on the chests of everyone from the very young to the hard-rockin' retirees).

With 68 corporate-owned cafés, the Hard Rock Café business is by no means one of the largest restaurant chains, but because of the nature of the brand, they have to treat it like it's a massive worldwide business. In fact, that's partially true, especially as the name has been expanded to everything from casinos to clothing shops. As not only a global business, but as an icon of the Western world, facility management and security is a very serious business for Long. "We have to stay focused on managing our risk profile."

But it's not gangs of thieves or International terrorists they're always on the look-out for. In actuality, the kind of thing that keeps him up at night is a café fire.

"We've had a few fires, including two in particular," he says. "Fires are just devastating to our business."

Indeed that was the case when a fire hit the Hard Rock Café London in 2005, shutting the company's flagship and original location for 5 months. The fire was never pin-pointed to a particular fire safety failure, but for Long, the fire was traumatic to the company, having taken down the company's cornerstone operation. Losing the flagship restaurant made management think about survivability.