Is your town starting to look like every other town?

Was a soft takeover, Joe. The established business never closed, but was slowly going the way of attrition. As near as I can figure; the previous owners piped just enough money in in the off-season to keep it afloat for dinner, 6 days a week. Superficially, it's beautiful; but between stock, maintenance and necessary improvements we're probably going to have to shell out around $50,000 more before the season hits.

First week was slow, but as the buzz traveled across the small town (we got haircuts and opened a bank account, bought groceries and other such small-town-guerilla-marketing techniques), we got busier. This past weekend was the busiest the place has been since last summer! Advertising isn't much of an issue since we're right on the main street with tons of sidewalk traffic in a tourist town. Among the improvements will be to expand the outside seating right up to the sidewalk to use my guests as a billboard, since the town has strict limits on sign size. Season is still 2 months away and we've already had to turn away folks for lack of capacity. The day we change the sign (if we ever come up with time to come up with one), we're going to put down purple mulch around the perimeter of the picket fence to draw everyone's attention (hopefully). We found some that matches the color of the trim on the house almost exactly (believe it or not).

Chef tells me he'll be ready for Sundays next week, lunch the week after that (if I can get a staff trained in time) and a Sunday brunch within 2 weeks after that. He's the bomb. Some folks have described us as the only "fine-dining" game in town... but we're thinking that's probably the part that scares too many of the locals away. Currently we charge about $25 a plate and everything is ala carte. The average guest spends $34 per person and I've seen a bit too much sticker-shock (I think) already. Those who don't care would gladly pay double for the quality they're getting, and spend $50 to $75 per person which leaves practically nothing for those who are trying to eat on the cheap... so we're thinking we'll do better by adding some more reasonable staples for our local guests who don't like spending an arm and a leg on dinner. I'm thinking $9 is a bit too pricey for the fancy Martini's too and will likely drop them to $7. Pricey stuff doesn't help if it doesn't sell and I fear it scares away too many. I'd rather make a reasonable profit and have more people leave feeling like they got more than they paid for. Feedback has been outstanding for both what we've done so far and what we're proposing. Don't know when or even if I'll be able to report success; but I'm quite satisfied with our first 9 days progress. :smile:

Holy crap, is that the time? Good night all in cyberspace.

Good Luck, O' Bill. I support my local restaurants, although we are not very frequent eaters-out, and we have a couple of recently opened ones here which are good.
Best wishes for the venture.

Hey how's the restaurant going?

Follow Bill's adventure into the food racket and his attempts to get Brook to become his bartender at
The Poll should show he's nuts but it doesn't....

We went from being a family diner and farm market town to commercial in the short course of 5 years. A few developers come in armed with a fully loaded checkbook, talk to a few struggling peach farmers, and it's Home Depot, Wal-mart Supercenter, Lowe's, Target, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Advanced Auto Parts, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Welcome to a2k, can of ham, and is your car a tarantula?

I am sorry about your town's flip into such a commercial place. Is there any chance of the less generic boxed places becoming more of an attraction?

My present town dealt with it by making the old part of downtown a tourist area. This works pretty well, or well enough, for a few months of the year, but then the townspeople have no reason to go there in the off months, as non tourist businesses are kept out. So, I think it was a dumb idea...

I forgot to say, thanks to Joe for the link.

On the topic of towns and neighbourhoods, I have lived here in this corner of suburbia for about 30 years and the area seems to be improving, if you count a few extra bistros (2 actually) and a new restaurant which is striving for high standards, if not for lowest prices.

And one Tesco Express, which is for groceries. So we are quite well served, and thankfully are too small for a big coffee chain to come in (I hope)

Downtown though, in common with the high streets of most medium-sized towns and all cities in this kingdom, there is a depressing similarity in the retail outlets and eateries. McDonalds must be approaching market saturation here, too.

I took this photo yesterday. I love this little street, it's 186th street, I think, chopped off at it's bottom by the Overlook Stairs, it's storefront jammed next to storefront. I should go take a shot of each one and sew them together.

The d has been missing from Gideon's sign for about four years. No one seems to notice as they go in to get fresh fruit pies and sweet chocolate pastries. Next to Gi eon's is Launderiffic. Call them. They come to your apartment, pick up your laundry bag and bring it back in about six hours, fresh, folded and ready to put in the bureau.

More Later.

Joe(taking this picture my back was up against the new Organic Foods restaurant.)Nation

I just found this thread. I'm definitately in the Joe/Gus camp when it comes to supporting individual enterprise vs corporate greed.

I live in an oasis among the masses. I'm 30 mins from downtown Chicago in a village with 1 to 5 acre lots of mostly heavy woodland. We've been inundated by developers tearing out the woods and putting up the largest McMansion the building footprint allows. A group of us started fighting back two years ago and this spring our village passed a woodland protection ordinance that restricts the removal of the woodlands on any lot. Trees are still coming down and McMansions are still going up, but at least we got something in place before there were no trees left.

Mr B and I eat out quite often but only at places that are local enterprises, usually ethnic restaurants run by first or second generation emigrants. Most of my 'fun money' goes towards plants and gardening supplies and I always buy from local nurseries and garden centers, although prices are cheaper at the national Home centers.

I'd rather spend $75 for a meal at O'Bill's place than half that at a chain steakhouse or much less at a fastfood drive-through. There is a diner-like restaurant in the next town that's only open for breakfast and lunch. A chain restaurant opened up two blocks away with the stated intend of putting the local folks out of business. The chain was gone less than two years later and the local place is still going strong. It was heartwarming to see the locals stay true to local enterprise.

Thanks for posting the pic of Joe from yesteryear, it made me smile.

That is definitely not Generica, Joe.

I wish we had a Launderiffic here. What a great idea! But perhaps you should edit it out of your post. Now that you've publicized it on the internet, you never know. Some enterprising person might decide to turn this great idea into a national chain. Your quaint little friendly neighborhood business's owner, Mr. Schmidlap, would get stars in his eyes at the possibility of making millions and would soon find himself absorbed by the burgeoning national Launderiffic franchise. Mrs. Winkel, who has been working in the back room for 27 years meticulously ironing and folding your shirts and knows you like only LIGHT starch, please, would be replaced by Chad, the 19 year old highschool dropout with a skin condition who will work for minimum wage. However, their prices will be cheaper than Laundry City, the new big box that moved into the area two years ago, so they will be an immediate success. Soon the storefront will be covered in neon and plastic, and the requisite fleet of corporate delivery vans will be parked at the curb. This will surely attract the attention of Starbuck's and Gap, and......well......there goes the neighborhood.

All because you publicized it on the internet. See what could happen? I'd think twice about posting such things if I were you. :wink:

Oops, did I kill this thread?!

Nahh, Eva. It's just gone dormant, is all.

In the town of my natality in southern colorado and down near the old railroad depot was a cafe called Magdelenas. It had been a La Famila hot spot during prohibition called the Bucket of Blood but had been closed by law enforcement officers in 1928 and the front door bricked-up. Two ladies, one first generation Italian immigrant and the other a Mesitzo senora (neither spoke the other's language) bought the store front and for access knocked a hole thru the brick wall into the bar next door (the bar called Rocco's) served Grappa, glasses of beer and canadian whisky blends. The hole in the wall between was just big enough so that if you ducked a little bit you could get through quite easily. Each morning around 10 a.m the two ladies would arrive after doing their morning marketing and sit down at one of the 5 tables in their cafe and write out on a Big Chief Tablet 2 copies of the menu for the day which could then be passed from customer to customer as they arrived. you needed to arrive no later than 11 a.m. to get a menu and to get your order in and the ladies would prepare from scratch your order. There were usually two lunch meals on the menu, one being Italian and one being Mexican. You would usually be able to get and eat your meal within 2 or 3 hours at a cost of under $7 each. In the early 70's some city government depatment had the place closed because it had no fire-escape (let alone a front door) Best food I have ever eaten.

I wonder how they talked over the years... learned English, I suppose, and bits of each other's language.

That sounds like a wonderful place, indeed.
That story made me think of a scene with tumbleweed and a soundtrack by Ry Cooder.

On the subject of creeping strangulation by coffee shops, I read in the paper today that the coffee harvest is very bad, worldwide, and the cost of the raw material is set to soar.

Particularly with the price of oil to move the coffee from plantations to processing to grocery stores.

Good thing I own that 40-acre lot on the mountainside in Haluloa, Hawaii, where most of my neighbors have their own coffee plantations . . .






. . . I wish.

Coffee, tea, or me?

Coffee has already skyrocketed for a few brands.

On the way to coffee.