“It’s a light rain,” said Kinnier Lastimosa as big raindrops fell on him and the magazine he was holding over his head, on the sidewalk outside a Northbrook restaurant giving away free lunches Friday. “I’m almost inside.”
There were at least two dozen people waiting at 11 a.m. outside Roti Modern Mediterranean, the start of three hours of free entrees at the Willow Festival shopping center in Northbrook. It was still sunny then, and Roti Marketing Manager Samantha Devermann had been pulling people out of line to congenially play “cornhole” bean-bag toss.
It was the first of two days of free lunches at the 8-year-old restaurant, which was staging the promotion, according to marketing director Analisa Terenzio, in order to show off a remodel and a few new wrinkles in the fast-casual fusion cuisine featuring North African, Spanish and Greek cuisine in sandwiches, rolls and salads.
“This is how you get a crowd here,” mused Brett Saul, who owns Naturepedic, an organic bedding company next door in the shopping center at Willow and Waukegan roads. “They haven’t had much of a crowd since they opened up the new one on Dundee.”
A year ago, Roti opened a second, bigger Northbrook restaurant in the NorthShore 770 center at Dundee Road and Skokie Boulevard. After that came another one in Deerfield, at 720 Waukegan Road.
Many of the people in line seemed, like Lastimosa, to be already sold on the food they were about to eat. He said it was worth a little extra personal wetness, “as it has always been good, and I expect it to be good again.” The line was liberally stocked with customers of the other locations, or old customers of the Willow Festival spot, who had found out about the event through social media or emails sent to existing customers.
“I got a text from my friend, but I was going to come here anyway,” Angela Shim said.
Terenzio had said the day before that it was fine with her if many of the no-cost customers were “crossovers” from other locations.
“We consider the North Shore our market, and we consider it all one market,” Terenzio said. “We want people to turn to us wherever they are, daytime and nighttime.”
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