Beach restaurant doing prep work for tourism season

On a recent Tuesday evening at Tautogs, a restaurant near the beach, Jessie Maus shared some words of wisdom with her trainee:

“You control the tables,” the veteran server instructed. “You don’t let the tables control you.”

The pair had fallen behind, taking too much time with one table while forgetting to check on another. As the tourist season descends on Tautogs, it was a crucial lesson for Dru Letourneau, training as a new waiter.

The eatery, on 23rd Street between Atlantic and Pacific avenues, served 97 meals on that relatively busy Tuesday. That number can more than double on the same night in the summer. On a Saturday in July last year, Tautogs served a record 338 meals.

Up and down the Oceanfront, businesses gear up for a summer surge, when sales can leap by more than 50 percent. They add staff, order twice as much cheese and crabmeat , buy extra laundry detergent and towels, and spruce up pools. The three summer months – June, July and August – account for 48 percent of annual tourism spending in Virginia Beach, according to the city’s Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Tautogs’ sales bump up 25 to 30 percent, owner Bill Gambrell said. His payroll expenses grow even more , from about $25,000 a month at the slowest times to $35,000 in the summer as he adds workers and more hours for existing staff.

A color graph that charts Tautogs’ sales by month over the past three years shows a classic mountain shape, with the peak in July and August.

Gambrell, a former city planner, uses such charts to track expenses, sales by day of the week, and best and worst sellers on the menu.

“I try to do some planning for what my future growth is going to be,” he said, citing one of his favorite adages: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

While many restaurants and retailers suffered in the recession, Tautogs saw a modest sales increase of about 2 percent in 2009, Gambrell said. This year, he has projected 5 percent growth.

“We’re always optimistic.”

Others in the Virginia Beach tourism industry have similar hopes. The Convention & Visitors Bureau forecast an increase in traffic and sales this summer, after two years of slight declines, said Jim Ricketts, the bureau’s director.

“The advance reservations from the hotels, from some of the comments I’ve gotten, have been positive,” he said. “People are starting to get optimistic that the economy is starting to turn around.”

Bookings for Gold Key/PHR Hotels and Resorts, with six Oceanfront hotels, are up at least 10 percent from the same time last year, said Elizabeth Weller, the company’s executive vice president of administration. The operator has budgeted to serve about 500,000 restaurant diners this summer, which would account for about 40 percent of the annual sales in eateries including Mahi Mah’s, Catch 31 and Pi-zzeria .

“We’re expecting a good season,” she said. “We’re pacing strongly.

Gold Key/PHR expands its hotel and restaurant staff from 1,200 out of season to almost 2,000 in the summer, Weller said. Of the 4 million pounds of laundry washed at its hotels in a year, 2.5 million, or 62.5 percent, piles up in the summer.

Coastal Edge, a local chain of eight surf shops, closes its three Atlantic Avenue stores between Labor Day and late March or early April. As the summer tourism tide rises, its work force swells from about 150 year-round employees to about 200, said its president, D. Nachnani.

Based on April sales, he projected growth in the high single digits for the summer, declining to be more specific. The surf shops order swimwear, clothing and surfing equipment in late summer for the following season.

“After 20 years, you look at your numbers, you build your plan and – just like the pilot of a plane – you adjust that course as you go through the season,” Nachnani said.

Tautogs is a locals’ place, less reliant on the summer surge than other Oceanfront shops and eateries, particularly those that close in the off-season. Gambrell opened it 15 years ago in a 1926 beach cottage that maintains a homey feel. “We don’t live for the summer,” Gambrell said.

Still, the restaurant is at the heart of Oceanfront activity. A half-block away, tourists stroll the strip, eating ice cream and pe eking in souvenir shops lit bright into the night.

Tautogs had four servers scheduled that recent Tuesday night, up from three on a typical weeknight most of the year. By Memorial Day, the serving staff grows to six on weekend nights.

Maus, 25, has worked at Tautogs for 10 years.

“We gotta kick it into high gear a little bit,” she told Letourneau as she picked up beers at the bar and delivered them to Table 30, where she described the specials.

She stopped at another table to offer dessert, before swinging back to the kitchen to plug orders into the computer.

Letourneau, 19, stayed on her heels.

“I took a little nap before I started,” he said .

Gambrell doesn’t do as much hiring of extra summer workers as he increases the hours of existing staff.

One of his college-student servers, for example, told him she planned to take only one summer class at Old Dominion University and wanted to work more nights.

Two kitchen staffers will add shifts as “prep chefs” this summer. They make everything the kitchen will need when it opens that evening – crab dip, bread pudding and the red onion relish that tops the blackened tuna – starting in the morning and working until the restaurant opens at 5:30 p.m.

“It’s not a big place, so adding a lot of extra people doesn’t make sense,” Gambrell said. “But adding people in a couple of places does.”

For the summer, Tautogs has hired a dishwasher, a hostess and workers to bus tables – or “sharks,” as Gambrell calls them.

“They keep moving, they keep smiling, they don’t talk,” he explained.

Gambrell starts rearing his staff young. Local high school students come to work at age 14 or 15 as sharks or hosts.

A University of Virginia student, Letourneau came home to Virginia Beach for his third summer at Tautogs. He moved up this year from hosting to serving.

“The biggest thing is learning the menu,” he said.

In the spring, Tautogs’ primary supplier hosts a food show and allows customers to pre-book items at set prices. Tautogs locks in orders of cheese, milk and vegetables.

That’s harder to do with seafood, a staple of the menu. A fish supplier will charge one price for 20 pounds of rockfish in April but double the price for the July Fourth weekend, Gambrell said. Items in high demand during the summer rise in cost.

This year, Gambrell and his partner, Scott Ferguson, are worried that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will raise prices for oysters and shrimp. Tautogs now gets its oysters from the Chesapeake Bay or off the Atlantic coast. Those usually cost twice as much as those from Gulf and are likely to get more expensive as demand shifts away from that region, Gambrell said.

“I pre-bought a tremendous amount of shrimp because of what’s going on in the Gulf,” Ferguson said. “Prices have already gone sky-high.”

Tautogs will boost its fish orders to as much as 80 pounds per week in the summer, up from about 50 pounds the rest of the year, said Mike Stroud, the restaurant’s chef.

“In the summer, I’ll have to order more catfish,” he said. “People from the Midwest know catfish.”

In the kitchen on that recent Tuesday, Maus sprinkled green parsley around the edge of the plates before carrying them to Table 25. She offered some pointers to the woman who ordered the stuffed flounder wrapped in parchment paper.

“Watch out for the steam,” she said, “and have fun!”

She warned Letourneau that some tourists, especially those “from the Midwest,” are less familiar with seafood and might need some hand-holding to order.

“They don’t know about the fish on the menu,” she said.

In recent years, Virginia Beach has seen growing tourist traffic in the spring and fall, partly because of city efforts to expand off-season business, said the Visitors Bureau’s Ricketts. Hotel sales in those shoulder seasons have risen more than 60 percent over the past decade, outpacing increases in the summer, he said.

A big high school wrestling tournament comes in the spring to the Virginia Beach Convention Center, bringing nearly 4,000 athletes and their families.

“I drove down on a Thursday night in March and the strip looked like the summertime,” Ricketts said.

Tautogs has seen some early signs of summer as well. Last Saturday , it tallied 251 dinners.

“This year is definitely an early season. It’s been hot,” Vinnie Smith said as he chopped red onions on a recent Friday morning. He works the salad station at night and added hours as a summer prep chef. “Last year, we didn’t get busy on the weekdays until the kids were out of school.”

On Monday, after a week of training, Letourneau served tables on his own for the second time.

Delivering wine to a couple at Table 30, properly – if a bit tentatively – pronouncing their choice of Gewürztraminer. After they finished their meals, he offered them dessert.

“To go, perhaps?” Letourneau suggested.

The woman shook her head but hinted at more business to come for Tautogs.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll save room for dessert.” Carolyn Shapiro, (757) 446-2270,carolyn.shapiro@pilotonline.com