The road to franchising your restaurant is paved with good intentions. Amsterdam Falafel proprietors Scott and Arianne Bennett would know: “To be honest, I was thinking about [franchising] from day one," says Scott. "We have a very franchisable model, so why not?”

But, four years ago, when the Bennetts set out to open up a second location on Capitol Hill, Scott broke his leg and plans were scrapped. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, he says,  since the intricate machinations of setting up a second shop weren't really in place yet. "We were light years off." Now, after careful coaching from FranPoint Partners, a sister falafel store is closer than ever before.

The Bennetts even have a location in mind: Boston. Although the D.C. pita moguls don't know the area well, one promising franchise candidate was all it took to send them on a quick trip to Beantown. And the visit confirmed that Boston was a fit: "Lots of walking neighborhoods, kind of like our neighborhood," says Arianne. "Families, tourists, very much a community."

There are still issues to iron out, though. The would-be Bostonian owner is still looking for a property, meaning that other hopeful franchisees could very well be open before the store in Beantown. Still, at Amsterdam's original location in Adams Morgan, a small jar on the counter sits with the following message: "Are you from Boston? The next Amsterdam Falafelshop is making tracks for Boston. If you live in that area, drop in a card and we’ll call you when we open."

"Last time I checked, there were 31 cards," Arianne says with a smile.

Photo via Flickr user joelogon using a Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons License.

So the news broke this week that after years of working out the details, Amsterdam Falafelshop will finally start franchising its delicious fried chickpea concept. As Joe Spinelli told me on Monday, the Adams Morgan falafel operation could soon become a monster, with more than 100 shops within the next seven years.

"This is going to [be] a very hot concept," Spinelli e-mails me.

So who is Joe Spinelli and what does he have to do with Amsterdam Falafelshop?

Good question. Spinelli is the co-owner of FranPoint Partners, a restaurant franchise and development firm based in Annapolis. He and his business partner, Richard Sharoff, have been working with Scott and Arianne Bennett, owners of the Falafelshop, on setting up and running the company that will oversee the many future Amsterdam franchises.

They're also the guys responsible for the long delay in getting this project off the ground. It seems that Sharoff and Spinelli know a few things about franchises. They know that unless you have all your systems in place, the new franchise concept could fall flat on its face. So Sharoff and Spinelli examined every facet of the Amsterdam Falafelshop business, from ordering to accounting, and made sure that each procedure was as streamlined and efficient and profitable as possible.

"It was a process that we knew would take a long time," says Arianne Bennett. "But we didn't know it would take this long."

The most minute details are important in the franchise business, Bennett notes. Things that a typical small business would never notice, like a .2 percent rise in food costs, can apparently have a dramatic impact when you start dealing with the large orders involved with franchises. FranPoint helped the Bennetts develop a system to track even the tiniest changes in food costs.

But some things the Bennetts had to do on their own. Like break down every recipe, including those for the nearly 20 different salads on the toppings bar, to make sure that the proportions were exactly right and could be easily replicated, even by some high-school flunkie making minimum wage. They also had to write several different franchisee manuals, including an employee handbook and a recipe book.

"I just sat here and banged this out at night," Arianne Bennett says. Lawyers, of course, had to review everything.

Perhaps most interesting of all, the Bennetts paid for all these franchising costs without taking on partners or investors. "We've used the majority of the profits from the last three years to do it," Arianne Bennett says.

The Bennetts are going to start franchising with a focus on the East Coast, even though they have had interest from operators on both the West Coast and in the Midwest. "They don't have to be right here in D.C.," Arianne Bennett says, but for now, the company would like future franchisees to be within a short plane flight so the owners can visit quickly, if need be.

The FranPoint crew is currently vetting possible future franchisees, including some in D.C. and Virginia, to make sure they're the right fit and have the right experience. But there's also a hidden benefit for the Bennetts now that their franchise company is up and running: They can start working on opening another Amsterdam Falafelshop of their own.

Arianne Bennett and Greggory Hill

This week’s Young & Hungry column plumbs the depths of my despair over the pending closure of Ren’s Ramen in Bethesda. As part of the column, I asked a number of chefs, restaurateurs, and writers to share their own stories about beloved eateries that have bit the dust. Some of the stories, unfortunately, didn’t make it into print. Like this one from Amsterdam Falafelshop owner Arianne Bennett:

For Scott [Bennett, her husband] and myself, who have been married 19 years now, our early lives were populated with eating indulgences that were lesser-known spots in D.C...

Fio's (that was in the Woodner on 16th), with its amazing Italian food. It was a real gem that always served squid-ink pasta. It was a favorite for years of all the restaurant people we know. We spent many nights indulging in plates of pasta and great stories in a place that seemed like a trip to another country in the midst of this strange apartment monolith.

And, who can forget the amazing buffet at Gabrielle for all those years at the former Radisson Barcelo on P Street. We would go there every weekend for brunch, and avail ourselves of the sweet-cream polenta with strawberries, the succulent roasted pig at the end of the table, and chocolate bread pudding made from croissants,  followed by a nap each time! When it closed, we followed the chef and begged for his bread pudding every holiday for our family!

We heard about Fio's closing in a paper (don't remember which), and it was like the earth had fallen away from us — we were shocked, devastated.  There were rumors that their landlord didn't want to renew, and rumors that they were tired of it all, but we didn't care why — we just wanted them back. There was an instant hole in us because of it.

Gabrielle was a mixed bag — we heard about it from Greg Hill, the chef, but it was a celebration for him, because he was getting his own place. Moving on. And we were excited for him and had to celebrate his success, but then inside we were dying, devastated when we realized that the Sunday Brunch event was going to be gone. No more crispy pig skin. We tried to go there a few times after he left, but then they changed over the whole theme, and then renovated the rest of the hotel, and it was forever gone. Now we just don't go to brunch anymore. Nothing pulled us out to join the weekend crowds like that brunch. I can even taste the sweet-cream-polenta now... tears...

So what if you launched a D.C. Dish Hall of Fame contest to suss out the metro area's best bites and it turned into a coronation of the region's cheap eats? It would make sense, right? After all, as I noted early in the voting, the odds are stacked decidedly against the high-end restaurants.

Arianne Bennett, co-owner of the namesake dish and Hall of Fame inductee at the Amsterdam Falafelshop, said much the same thing in an e-mail to me after I announced the contest results on Monday:

I think that some of the high-end restaurants missed out, and the lower-price-point places excelled in the voting because of two reasons:

1.  more bodies move through our restaurants daily, resulting in more bodies that have tried the food and can vote, and
2. higher end restaurants have more diverse menus – everyone who goes to Blue Duck has not had the incredible pleasure of the marrow bone appetizer... but everyone who goes to the Falafelshop pretty much gets a falafel (same with Pollo or Ben's).

Bennett suggests a dual platform contest next year: one for high-end dishes and one for fast-food or fast-casual dishes. It's a good idea.

However, in the meantime, whether fair or not, I have decided to weigh in on the winners of our inaugural Hall of Fame contest. Did they deserve the honor or not? You can read my thoughts here.

Yesterday, readers of the Young & Hungry newsletter (hint, hint: sign up at right) got first word on who won the D.C. Dish Hall of Fame. Today, we tell everyone the results of our debut contest, which we launched back in October with the idea of sussing out the dishes that best define the D.C. metro area.

From the very beginning, voters were clear on their favorite. It's the same one that Bill Cosby loves. The same one that puzzled future president Barack Obama. The same one made in Baltimore but rich in D.C. history.

Yep, you know it as the chili half-smoke from Ben's Chili Bowl.

The famous link in the natural casing, topped with the joint's dark signature meat gravy, beat the nearest competitor, the falafel from Amsterdam Falafelshop, by more than 100 votes. In terms of this contest, that's a landslide.

It's a landslide particularly when you consider that Ben's, unlike Amsterdam, did not solicit customers to vote for its dish. Nizam Ali, the youngest son of founders Virginia and the late Ben Ali, says he didn't even know about the Hall of Fame voting until late last week. At that point, he told a handful of friends about it, and even voted himself, but didn't promote the contest at the Bowl.

Who did Nizam Ali vote for? "I voted for us, of course," says Ali, who now runs Ben's with older brother Kamal. "I voted for Horace & Dickie's fried fish and what was the other one? I can't remember now."

"Oh, I think it was 2Amys," he says about the pizzeria's Margherita pie.

Many of the 1,238 voters agreed with Ali's choices. More than 500 of them voted for the chili half-smoke, followed by the falafel at Amsterdam (395 votes), the hamburger at Five Guys (259), the Peruvian chicken at El Pollo Rico (193), and the Margherita pizza at 2Amys (186). These five dishes make up the inaugural class of the D.C. Dish Hall of Fame.

"It is only because of the loyal following of our customers that we could have achieved something like this, and we are honored beyond belief to be included with the likes of true landmarks like Ben's, and true culinary delights like 2Amys," writes Arianne Bennett, co-owner of Amsterdam Falafelshop with husband, Scott.

Bennett's not kidding about the loyal following. Their customers are so loyal, they take orders. Bennett admits that Amsterdam added a note to the bottom of the shop's receipts, urging customers to vote; she also alerted the vegetarian community in an effort to solicit more votes for the only veggie option in the competition. Maybe as a result, many of the comments we received about Amsterdam's falafel were nothing less than gushing.

A sample: "Amsterdam has the Best Falefel ever, I adore them and wish there was one right next to my house!"

Then again, Ben's earned its praise without any prodding from the restaurant. Consider this reader comment: "As much as I enjoy a nice dinner at Central or Cafe Atlantico, nothing beats a half-smoke. And no half-smoke beats one from Ben's. I just moved away from DC after 22 years this fall, and the idea that I won't ever be able to eat a half-smoke unless I'm visiting my parents kills me."

Or consider what chefs think about Ben's half-smoke, despite the fact that it's a commercial sausage produced by Manger Packing Corp. in Baltimore. "I have had the half smoke with chili. I have had the half smoke with a fried egg. I think it's good," says chef R.J. Cooper of Vidalia, where he's been known to make his own sausages. "Is it the quintessential Washington, D.C. food? If anything is it, that would have to be it."

The interesting thing is that both Ben's and Amsterdam — one an institution, the other a budding one — are still formulating or thinking about franchising plans. Could either one (or both) become the next Five Guys, a once (and always) beloved local institution that has spread its seed all over the country?

The question is rather loaded, especially for Nizam Ali and family. Ali said he had read Y&H's recent blog item, in which I wondered whether Five Guys' burger was still Hall of Fame worthy given that the chain's aggressive franchising has (sometimes) hurt the quality of its product (not to mention managers' ability to make sure cooks know how to griddle those patties properly).

"I thought to myself, Hey, if and when or somewhere down the line if the Chili Bowl franchises, would that knock the half-smoke or Ben's out of the running[for a place among D.C.'s iconic dishes]?" Nizam Ali says. "It's an interesting question."

It's an interesting question for the Alis because, for 51 years now, they have prided themselves on their personal touch at Ben's. They've prided themselves on the history that the U Street institution oozes. They've prided themselves, in short, on being a family-run business.

"Because of the history and legacy of the family, we really want to do it our way and kind of want to keep control of it," Nizam Ali says. "The Chili Bowl has been all about family, and we want to keep our family intact. So if I'm running around selling franchises and my brother's running and going to the openings and checking the quality, then we're both divorced...You know what I mean? So what's more important? The running around and opening thousands of stores or making sure that your home life is happy and all that stuff. That's kind of more important to us."

At the same time, the Alis have not ruled out franchising altogether. It's probably impossible to rule out franchising when the family constantly receives calls about it. But here's hoping that Ben's never becomes another Five Guys, no matter how much money they could make from it.

As a final note, I want to thank all of you who participated in our very first D.C. Dish Hall of Fame contest. If you have some thoughts about the results, please e-mail them to me, and I'll publish the best on the blog.

In the meantime, go out and congratulate the winners by visiting their restaurants.

The inaugural class of the D.C. Dish Hall of Fame:

Half-smoke with chili at Ben's Chili Bowl, 502 votes

Falafel at Amsterdam Falafelshop, 395

Hamburger at Five Guys, 259

Peruvian chicken at El Pollo Rico, 193

Margherita pizza at 2Amys, 186

Or Johnny's Half Shell! Allow me to explain why.

The wife and I had just got to the Strathmore Music Center. We were running late as we scampered to find our seats for last night's Lyle Lovett concert. Carrie assumed the task of securing our seats. I headed to the restroom.

When Carrie got to our seats, she found that they were occupied. Now these were no ordinary seats. These were my birthday-present seats, located smack-dab in the middle of the first row of the Grand Tier. (The photo above gives you an idea of the view from these seats.) There was only one seat available, and Carrie took it, hoping to work out the problem. The occupants of the other seats started teasing Carrie:

Where is your husband going to sit? they wondered. ("On my lap," Carrie told them.) What's your husband's name? ("Tim," she said.) Well, maybe we don't want Tim to sit with us; we like you better. ("No, you'll like Tim, too," Carrie added.)

They were having a jolly friggin' time without me.

When I finally emerged from the restroom, the usher was still trying to sort out the seating snafu. The occupants rightfully had tickets to those seats, too, the usher told me. I was about to get annoyed by this double-booking when the usher finally figured out the problem: The seat squatters were supposed to be in the level above us. He promptly filed them out of our seats.

That's when I really got a good look at who had stole our seats:

John Fulchino from Johnny's Half Shell and Arianne and Scott Bennett from the Amsterdam Falafelshop.

As they sheepishly walked past me, I looked Arianne Bennett in the eye and said, "You know, this is so going to be a blog item tomorrow." When I ran into them after the show, I added that they could expect awful reviews from this point out.

I was joking. I think.