It takes optimism to open a restaurant in hard times

VIRGINIA BEACH

The last person to eat barbecue here left eight months ago.

At the restaurant's entrance, a potted evergreen sat dead from thirst. A tall weed strained from a crack in the sidewalk.

Inside what was once Beale Street Memphis Steak & Rib House in Virginia Beach, it was like an attic. No sound, no lights, no AC.

Tables were neatly set for no one.

At the edge of the dining room, two men sat in a wan patch of late June sunlight. The dormant neon sign attached to the window above them mocked: OPEN.

It was Tuesday, June 23, weeks past when Don Stull would have liked to open the place and serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, with his menu of hand-cut steaks, big sandwiches and spicy "Boom Boom Shrimp."

Stull is a blue-eyed bear of a man, who often talks and laughs at the same time. But the toughest commercial credit market in decades tested his optimism. First, it took forever to find a lender, despite his 30-year track record as a restaurant owner. Meanwhile, he secured a couple of credit cards with $50,000 limits. When the $55,000 loan was approved, he had to post 300 percent collateral, and Stull and his wife, Debra, put their home on the line to open this 124-seater they're calling Deuce McGee's Grille.

Across the table from Stull sat Warren Miller. The Shore Drive property belongs to Miller's wife, and the former restaurant was run by his stepson, Jesse Walker, who threw in the barbecue mop when his back went bad.

One by one, Miller removed papers from his portfolio - amortization schedules for the pots, pans, ovens, dishes and other equipment Stull was buying, the rental agreement for the building, insurance papers, permits. Stull inspected every document through half-moon reading glasses, a big, balled fist tapping nervously on one knee.

A scratching of pens made the deal official. Then Stull wrote out a yellow check for $10,227.11. Five thousand was for a deposit, $4,000 for the first month's rent and the rest for taxes and insurance. He'd soon stroke another check, the first payment to Miller for $45,000 in equipment, plus interest.

"That gives you a little something if I fail," Stull said half-jokingly.

"We're not going to say that word today," Miller said.

Then the men shook hands, and, for Stull, the money clock started ticking. With no customers coming in to offset expenses, every day Deuce McGee's didn't open would cost him nearly $600.

"Two weeks," he said, looking around the dining room and bar. "I can do this in two weeks."

Opening an independent restaurant is the ultimate act of faith. Opening one in a full-on recession might seem fanatical.

Stull explained it like this: "I had to buy myself a job."

He got his start in managing restaurants at a chain called Mr. Steak. That came after studying Greek and psychology in college and following an early "false calling" toward the ministry.

Along with two partners, he took on his first place in 1980, a small pub in the Lynnhaven section of Virginia Beach called Bobby McGee's. That's where, on an August night nearly 29 years ago, he met Debra, his wife and soulmate.

Then he and Debra were off to South Nags Head to open D.B. Cooper's, a restaurant perched atop what was then the Ramada Inn. A few years later, he and a partner opened Smackwater Jacks, just up Virginia Beach Boulevard from Bobby McGee's.

In 1989, he and Debra opened a second location of Smacks, a Cheers-like sports bar in a strip mall near the Virginia Beach-Chesapeake line. They later changed the name to Baker Street Eatery, and then, for the most unlikely length of time, Stull stood still.

He thought he'd flip the restaurant after four years. But business was good; annual sales totaled as much as $1.4 million.

Two years ago, he finally needed a change.

So he sold it all to become a restaurant consultant. That fizzled, along with the economy, and he attempted a comeback as a chain restaurant manager.

Now this is a man who had owned four restaurants and in his spare time composed a 22-page, single-spaced doctrine titled "Philosophy of Service." At the chains, the scripted workplace procedures, which he sometimes found counterproductive, made him a bad fit. Twice he was fired.

By then, the economy had sunk like a ruined souffle. Stull floated 80 resumes with a teaspoon of response. He finally managed an interview with another chain and just knew he'd aced it. But a rejection notice arrived in the mail a few days later.

"It had become obvious that, at 60 years old, I would have to buy myself a job. No one was going to hire me."

He bought himself a big one.

On June 23, Stull's to-do list loomed long and costly: get ABC license ($1,275); buy griddle/broiler ($2,400); get fire inspection ($200); get health department inspection ($100); pay power company deposit ($4,100); pay gas company deposit ($2,200); get six-month city business license ($1,050); remodel dining room ($10,000); order trash bin; order linen service; call sign company; interview, hire and train 16 waiters, nine full-time cooks, two part-time cooks, one kitchen manager, two hosts, one bartender and three dishwashers.

The next day, a clean-cut young man in a white chef's coat came seeking a second job.

"Something to keep my creative side up," he told Stull. "And to bring in more money."

The owner and the applicant faced each other across a long table in a narrow dining room on the side of the building. The AC still hadn't been turned on, but a breeze off the Chesapeake Bay made the temperature tolerable.

At this point, the nation's 9.5 percent unemployment rate gave Stull an advantage. An inch-thick stack of resumes sat in front of him from people without experience, people with decades of experience, college kids and career restaurant people who had worked at the Boar's Head Inn, Elliott's, Kelly's, Garrison's, Scotty Quixx, Shorebreak and Surf Rider, plus some of the old crew from Baker Street and Beale Street. Many had been laid off.

Near the top of Stull's to-do list was hiring a "stud," his term for a cook with the discipline to run the kitchen and the culinary know-how to dream up nightly specials.

"I never want to be in the position at 4 in the afternoon wondering what that night's special will be," Stull said.

The applicant, a former student at the Culinary Institute of Virginia, leaned across the table to hand Stull his cell phone. The screen showed a picture of a tapas-style salmon dish - four artsy, bite-sized servings, each with a different flavor profile. At his other job, there wasn't much room for this kind of creativity, the cook said.

The talk moved to the merits of flat vs. roll dumplings, and Stull, whose conversations tend to wander, described a dish he'd been dreaming up: a hot dog smeared in pimento cheese, wrapped in bacon, battered and then fried.

"I saw this batter-dipped hamburger on one of those cooking shows...," Stull said.

"Oh, I saw that, too!"

"What's your secret ingredient?" The question came like a sudden change in the weather.

"Brown sugar."

"Ahh, brown sugar," Stull said, "I like that."

Time to tackle the "m" word. The cook was making $9 an hour. "Decent to me is 10," he said.

"That's a sign of the times," said Stull, who has paid cooks as much as $17 an hour. "If I offered you a job, I'd have to pay you a little bit less than I'd like to. I'm going to have to ask for a little help from everyone in the beginning."

Brown sugar aside, the cook didn't quite make the cut.

No matter, day after day after day, applicants trickled in.

It was Tuesday, July 7. Opening day.

Only it wasn't.

A sawhorse blocked the front entrance, where a carpenter maneuvered a whining circular saw through a 2-by-4.

Inside, the AC blasted and George Thorogood rocked a boom box somewhere. Wires dangled from a beam separating the kitchen and dining room. The surface of the bar was a stew of tool belts, drill bits, a mixed-beverage price list, business cards, drain liners, paper towels, empty water bottles, cleaning fluid, menu covers and a sample of sweet chili sauce from a food salesperson.

Debra Stull and some friends and relatives had put a fresh coat of paint on the ceiling over the July Fourth weekend. But the tables were topless; they'd been sent out for resurfacing. The carpet had been peeled off the dining room floor.

More than $5,000 worth of tile, scheduled to arrive today, had not. The whole place smelled of fresh-cut wood and cleaning products. There was no sign of the sign.

Debra had a new philosophy about setting an opening date. "Don is the optimist," she said. "I'm just always saying next Thursday."

Stull had just learned that swinging doors for the kitchen could run $1,400 each. Plus, he heard that the griddle/broiler, the "centerpiece" of the cook line that was supposed to be delivered today, was actually being manufactured today. The ETA for that was two weeks, but he was optimistic that it would arrive sooner.

Stull stopped in the dining room for a moment. His eyes were bloodshot, and he gripped a cell phone in one beefy fist. He still had many more checks to write and tons to do, including a few more hires and training the kitchen and dining room staff.

"I think," he said, "that next Wednesday is doable."

Dreaming up a menu. Setting up a kitchen. Watching diners delight in what he's done. For Stull, these are the rewards of opening a restaurant.

But he also relishes training the staff. To psych himself up, he reaches far into his past, before he ever knew what an 86 list was (the stuff the kitchen is out of) or got his first dressing-down by an angry cook.

On Tuesday, July 14, his new restaurant was still a mess when he stood at the head of a long table, gripping a prepared speech and taking a deep breath.

"I'm about to give you a piece of my life," he said. "I've learned it. I've lived it. I've grown by it." He choked out the last few words. His eyes teared up.

It was an odd way to start a training session. None of the dozen Deuce McGee's wait staff-to-be moved an inch. The room was as silent as a sanctuary.

What they didn't know is that Stull is the son and grandson of a West Virginia coal miner. Brimming with self-doubt, he chose a different life, scraping his way through Marshall University and then following that early "false calling" into Duke Divinity School. There he finally cast off his crippling insecurity and prepared for a career in counseling. He left before graduating, but he's still a counselor at heart.

Each waitress had a copy of Stull's "Philosophy of Service" and a 49-page supplement subtitled "Give 'Em What They Want, Just Make it Better Than They Expected."

It was time for a heaping side of self-esteem, which Stull titled, "I'll Do This Until I Get a Real Job."

Think of it this way, he said. Out there in that dining room, each of you has your own little, five-table "profit center." But you don't have to pay for food or electricity or rent. The level of customer service, he said, will determine how much money you make... and how much money the restaurant makes.

He quoted a statistic: In a recent nationwide survey of disgruntled diners, 68 percent didn't return because of bad service.

Not here, not ever.

Stull outlined his dining room doctrine, which includes using customers' names, never serving food that doesn't look right or assuming that the change is yours to keep.

Never forget that the customer's experience - and the success of Deuce McGee's - is in your hands. And if you don't think that being a server is important, or believe that it's respectable, neither the restaurant nor you will fare well.

"This job doesn't define who you are," he said. "How you do this job defines who you are.

"This is a real job."

But when it would start, he could not say.

"It depends on the tabletops," he said. "I was told two weeks. Today I was told four weeks. That means they'll get here the 24th. If they do, we'll open the 25th."

Stull could have opened his restaurant without a soda machine, without a "stud" in the kitchen, without those swinging doors. But he couldn't open without tabletops.

At 5:30 p.m. on Monday, July 20, Stull tracked them down where they languished on a dock in Portsmouth. A stainless steel ice bin arrived at 7 p.m. on a semi from Indiana.

So at 7 the next morning, Deuce McGee's opened for breakfast. It was 29 days and more than $100,000 after signing the rent check.

The sign was up and the dining room was spotless, almost elegant in Debra's beige and black decor. The griddle/broiler had come earlier than expected.

The wait staff was trained, the cooks stood at the ready and $10,000 worth of prime rib, crabmeat, cheese, ketchup, salt, seasonings and other foods filled the larder.

At 7:13 a.m., the first customer arrived, Mark Anderton, a former Beale Street regular who owns Shore Drive Shell next door. Alone at the bar, he ordered up sausage links and eggs, scrambled.

Anderton brought a newspaper with him to read over breakfast. A headline read: "Region will likely continue decline."

Stull remained optimistic.

He hardly expected a standing-room-only crowd his first week open. Didn't want one. He and the staff needed to work out the kinks before they started feeding full houses.

He'll have an advertised "grand opening" later this summer. That's when he expects to really build toward the $13,357 a week in sales he needs to break even.

But already his faith has been rewarded. On Deuce's first night, 85 people came in for dinner; the first Friday night crowd numbered 102. For the first Sunday morning breakfast, the dining room was full, and the customer count for the day stood at 231.

His jumbo crab cakes, Philly cheese steak sandwiches and hand-ground "Juicy Lucy" burgers with the cheese in the middle emerged as early customer favorites. By week's end, the Boom Boom Shrimp had sold out and hit the 86 list. He was $4,000 short of breaking even for the week.

"I don't want it to stay like this," he said, "but we're off to a good start. Thank goodness."

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com