The past is littered with failed celebrity businesses. For every mega-success like Casamigos or Fenty Beauty, there are dozens of wannabes and misguided cash-in attempts that stumbled at the first hurdle. The gamble can pay off endlessly if it works but it’s easy to screw it up or overestimate how much the general public cares about you and your wacky ideas. As a pop culture writer with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of this stuff, I’m always excited to force other people to know what’s going on inside my head at all times. So, let me introduce you to one such example, involving an iconic filmmaker, the theme restaurant fad, and a near-naïve belief in the power of the sandwich.
In the 1990s, Steven Spielberg was a titan. He’s still one of the biggest and most important American filmmakers but back then he was seen as utterly indomitable. It seemed like everything he put his name to would guarantee a multi-million dollar success. Amblin was producing films by Clint Eastwood and Robert Zemeckis. He was in the midst of setting up DreamWorks, a full-on studio that promised to keep up with the decades’ old stalwarts of Hollywood. Oh, and he gave us Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in the same year. He wasn’t just an entertainment leader; he was a brand. He’s still the most instantly recognizable director still working today. Even people who only go to the cinema once or twice a year could pick Spielberg out of a line-up.
So, the idea of him getting into the restaurant business didn’t seem that odd. The ’90s was also the era of the theme restaurant, and celebrities were a huge part of that. Planet Hollywood was founded in 1991 with the backing of Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A bunch of supermodels endorsed Fashion Cafe because that was an industry well-known for encouraging people not to have supremely disordered eating habits. The Hard Rock Cafe, which had been around since the ’70s, expanded into casinos and hotels in the ’90s. Hulk Hogan did something called Pastamania and everyone’s agreed to forget it ever happened. It’s easy to see why some of these succeeded and some of them failed. But Spielberg getting into this business, alongside the notoriously ruthless Jeffrey Katzenberg? Surely they would crack the code. They could offer the high-budget blockbuster immersion of Hollywood that made his movies so beloved. Why not let the guy who gave us Jaws give us a restaurant with similarly nautical themes?
I could never be trusted with a time machine because I absolutely would waste one of my trips on going to eat at Dive!, Spielberg’s failed theme restaurant from the 90s. pic.twitter.com/Fb2g8rkFdW
— Jessica Ritchey (jmritchey.bsky.social) (@Ruby_Stevens) December 19, 2022
Dive! opened in 1994, the same year Spielberg won his first Best Director Oscar. Inspired by Spielberg’s long-time fascination with Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the restaurant was styled like a big yellow and blue submarine. Inside, there were torpedo-shaped bar seats, portholes, and a periscope with a view of Los Angeles. The big dramatic climax had Dive! simulate a submarine submerging, complete with blinking lights overhead and water filling the portholes, every 45 minutes. As People wrote in their piece on the restaurant’s opening, ‘They have an oddball sense of humor here. As the “dive” ends, the Captain’s voice asks what can be seen from the periscope. The music then resumes with a song such as “I Can See Clearly Now” or “I See a Bad Moon Rising”…’ It cost $7 million just to construct the building.
And the menu? Subs! Yup, submarine sandwiches. People claimed that Spielberg had been inspired to make Dive! in part because ‘he could find a single submarine sandwich in Los Angeles which measured up to his childhood memories.’ Prices for the sandwiches — including soft shell crab subs, Chinese chicken salad subs, and the traditional Italian ones — ranged from $7.95 to $12.95. If you wanted commitment to the bit, you came to Dive!
You could also buy lots of merch to commemorate your visit. This was actually one of the main ways theme restaurants made their money. Stuff like Planet Hollywood keyrings and leather jackets were hot commodities, particularly when your main demographic is tourists who aren’t likely to revisit in the near future. According to People, you could get a Dive!-themed vest, boxer shorts, and leather jackets. The latter sold for $580.
It started out so well for Dive! Audiences rushed to check out this novelty, and apparently, many celebrities enjoyed hanging out there, too. People reported ‘the Fonz (Henry Winkler) and 007 (Pierce Brosnan) are becoming regulars, and that other celebs who have dined at Dive! include Tom Hanks, Rob Reiner, Candice Bergen, Warren Beatty, the Olsen Twins and Michael Keaton.’ A year later, they opened their second location in Las Vegas, a city where outlandish theming and expensive gimmicks are part of the allure. Dive! seemed to be a success. There were plans to expand across the country.
Menu from Steven Spielberg’s Dive! Nautical submarine sandwich restaurant pic.twitter.com/8QFOxpOtjC
— Mat Bradley-Tschirgi (@MatWBT) February 28, 2022
Both restaurants would be dead in the water by the 2000s. The original location only lasted until 1999. So, why did it fail?
It’s easy to look at the idea of a submarine-themed restaurant selling expensive sandwiches and say, ‘Well, there’s your answer.’ I don’t think it’s necessarily that easy to explain. Overpriced food and tacky theming have kept many an eatery going, especially in locations like L.A. and Vegas. But Dive!, outside of the novelty and Spielberg of it all, was a tougher sell than anticipated. First of all, it’s straight-up exhausting to be in a restaurant where you have to simulate a sub dive every hour. Imagine waiting for your food and the lights go off as a ‘captain’ yells about the descent. If you’re a family with young kids, it’s stressful enough to keep things contained in a public place. Now add the flash-bang-wallop of Dive! and see what happens to your four-year-old who won’t eat their sandwich.
Speaking of sandwiches, those weren’t very good either. The Los Angeles Times review gave the menu a decidedly mixed reception, and People called it ‘fairly predictable stuff, for the most part’ that ‘doesn’t quite measure up to all the hype’ despite the costs. If you’re going to make someone pay the equivalent of $28 in 2024 for a sandwich, it better be the best damn sandwich I’ve ever tasted. The sub theme didn’t entice visitors, as People noted that ‘the restaurant departed from its submarine sandwich-heavy menu (due to a decline in repeat business) and added a wider range of food items, including pizza, pasta and seafood. Subs now make up just 20% of the menu.)’
The restaurant business is brutal. It’s extremely difficult to make a profit in this field, the competition is tough, and they’re particularly sensitive to fluctuations in the market, like recessions or pandemics. People eat out less now, but even in the ’90s, it was still a luxury for many. Dive! had star power but that’ll only take you so far if the product itself isn’t good enough, and it wasn’t in this case. Sure, the restaurant itself was cool, but who wants to deal with an anxiety attack every 45 minutes while eating their sandwich? If I had gone to this place as a child, I would 100% have been the one screaming and crying in stress until my parents took me outside.
Dive! was bleeding money, but so was its competition. By the end of 1997, Planet Hollywood was reporting losses of $40 million. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999, then again a few years later. The Fashion Café closed in disgrace in 1998, a story that probably deserves its own post. Theme restaurants didn’t go extinct, and in places like Vegas and Nashville, they remain tourist hotspots. Celebrity chef-branded restaurants are also still popular, from Gordon Ramsay to Guy Fieri and beyond, but they are all known for their good food. The closest Spielberg got to that was with the Chilean sea bass in Jurassic Park, and he never planned to put that on a sub.
No celebrity is infallible. Even the biggest successes can stumble with good ideas that were poorly executed or suffered from poor timing. It’s not hard to imagine a world where, at the very least, Dive! remained in one or two locations, but they would have needed drastic overhauls, tighter profit margins, and something greater to offer than a faked sinking. Spielberg remains a powerhouse but in recent years has, smartly, stuck to making films and occasionally putting his name to projects as a producer. I hope he at least got to enjoy a few good sandwiches before it all sank to the bottom of the ocean.