Tavern on the Green Name Heads to Auction Block

After a taste of the Tavern on the Green brand, Louis Bivona is hungry for more.

The operator of Tavern Direct—which distributes salad dressings, oils and marinades under the name associated with the now-defunct, once-opulent restaurant in New York’s Central Park—is making a bid for the whole kit and caboodle, or at least what’s left of it.

Bivona’s new entity, Tavern International LLC, has put forth the lead bid in a proposed contest for Tavern on the Green LP’s intellectual-property rights as a trustee continues to wind down the business in Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Tavern International is offering $1.3 million in exchange for certain rights, including ownership of the Tavern on the Green trademark for oils and salad dressing (a boost for Bivona, who is just the licensee now under a deal struck before the company’s bankruptcy filing) and the right to register and use the trademark on scores of other products, from packaged food to home décor.

Think Tavern on the Green frozen dinners in your local supermarket—or even Tavern on the Green chandeliers, bar stools and patio furniture, said Gabe Fried, a principal at Streambank, the firm tapped by the bankruptcy trustee to run the sale.

“One could run a concept not dissimilar to what Williams Sonoma has but under the Tavern on the Green label,” Fried said in an interview Thursday.

The winner of the proposed auction, which the trustee wants to hold next month, would also get royalty-free use of the name for restaurants, as long as they’re not in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and parts of Pennsylvania.

That caveat stems from litigation launched by New York City, which claimed ownership of the Tavern on the Green trademark, Fried said. The suit was settled this spring under a deal that gave the city exclusive territory in which to operate a Tavern on the Green restaurant but left the trustee with the rest of the intellectual property.

The physical remnants of the restaurant, once a major tourist attraction, were sold off at the beginning of 2010, weeks after the restaurant’s last hurrah: a dazzling New Year’s Eve party. Pots, pans, place settings and the company’s Brooklyn warehouse were all auctioned off, Fried said.

This time around, Fried expects to see lots of interests in the assets on the block, resulting in multiple offers to rival Bivona’s. His pitch includes accolades from the restaurant’s glitzy past—one of the highest-grossing single-location restaurants in the country for a time, featured in more than a dozen movies, enjoyed thousands of hours of national and international television exposure.

“The brand awareness is something that couldn’t be built for 100 times what the current purchase price is going to be,” he said.

Of course, the time when tourists flocked to dine on multicourse meals under elegant chandeliers at the restaurant are long gone. These days, the area is used as a home base for food trucks and a Central Park visitors center.

And even some of the food trucks aren’t having much luck on the hallowed culinary ground.