Upscale Asian fusion restaurant taking shape on north edge of downtown St. Pete
By Eric Snider
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: May 18, 2015

It's a familiar breed: successful entrepreneurs who've always wanted to start a restaurant - so they do, because they can. Such vanity projects based on willy nilly strategies don't often work.

Patrick Marston - co-founder of Souzou, an upscale Asian fusion restaurant under construction in St. Petersburg - has a variation on that theme.

"I wanted to be the entrepreneur who starts a restaurant but puts together a good team and hires good people to make it a successful restaurant," he said, standing in the space that will become Souzou, as workers toil away around him.

Marston, who owns the health industry real estate company Optimal Outcomes with partner Andy Boggini, admits he knew nothing about the restaurant industry when the idea took shape about a year ago. That's why his first recruit was Mike Harting, owner/operator of 3 Daughters Brewing.

That's also why he brought in designer Scott Fisher of T2theS, even though Marston loves to design stuff. It's also why one of his minority partners is Ryan Griffin, owner of Mandarin Hide.

The 180-seat Souzou will occupy 4,600 square feet on the bottom floor of a building at 435 5th Ave. N. that Optimal Outcomes developed and owns.

While the new place - which Marston expects to open by mid-June - is not in one of St. Pete's restaurant hot zones, it's close by. Beach Drive and Central Avenue are just a few blocks away. The Hollander Hotel is one block south, the Palladium theater just east.

One of the location's biggest assets, in Marston's view, is its ample parking.

"Going into the heart of downtown, if you don't live there and walk, it can be [difficult]," he said. "Say you feel like going to happy hour on a Thursday, want to pull in, park, have a drink and an app, I think that's a plus for us."

Marston said Souzou will ultimately cost about $2 million, not including the real estate. "Hey, don't go halfway," he said with a grin. He and his group have invested heavily in the most advanced point-of-sale, inventory management and metrics systems, spent $300,000 on kitchen equipment, and bought state-of-the-art lighting from St. Petersburg-based LumaStream, among other capital expenses.

"We're not on Beach [Drive]," he said, "so we've go to do something extra that draws people here."