Heavily Seasoned

Running a restaurant is a lot like making salad. Into the mix goes a savvy business owner, a bag of cash and some waiters. Top off these ingredients with garnish such as good food and fair prices, and add years of experience as the dressing. Vigorous tossing and turning is necessary. Up and down, round and round.

"It's kind of funny," says Beirne Brown, partner with Tony Ridgway in Cuisine Management, owners of four of Collier County's finest restaurants and a tres chic bakery/wine shop. "People say 'I love to eat in restaurants, therefore I can run one.' That's like saying 'I'm fascinated with brain surgery. I can be a brain surgeon.' "

Fortunately, brain surgery has a better success rate than restaurants. According to the National Restaurant Association, eight out of 10 restaurants flatline in their first year, and another expires within the next three years. Food service is not for sissies.

"It's a business. It's not just cooking and entertaining," says Matt Asen. He and three partners own nine places, including Sanibel's legendary Prawnbroker, and the new University Grill, a Naples-priced dining room at Summerlin and Gladiolus in Fort Myers.

"Doctors and lawyers who invest in restaurants," he says, "want to be Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. They have no idea."

The basic idea sounds simple: have enough capital, labor and expertise. But as with any elegantly simple platitude, simplicity is complicated.

'Tis The Season

One of these missed ideas is the brutal reality of Southwest Florida's saturation of restaurants. In season, from December through April, two of the three minimum requirements of restaurant owners-capitalization and labor-grind at one another.

There's plenty of money to be made, but someone has to take the orders, prepare the food and wash the dishes.

"It's a labor nightmare," says Asen. "The practical problems are enormous." He describes slow nights, early in the season when one of his spots might serve 100 dinners and contrasts them with 600-dinner nights just days later. Asen deals with it in two ways. First, he has developed a sort of migrant worker system, where many of his staff works the summers on Nantucket or in other summertime resorts. These people come to Southwest Florida around Thanksgiving and stay through Easter.

But that's just some of the staff. Asen's second solution is hands-on. "The owners all work, counting lemons in the boxes, cleaning silverware and making sure every customer who walks out walks out happy."

As scarce as is labor, cash is plentiful during season. According to Cuisine Management's Brown, many operators allow March's money to eclipse September's specter of famine. "In March, so many say 'new car, trip to Europe.'" He shakes his head. "You might deserve them, but you can't afford them."

Summertime is the great equalizer. According to Brown, even in well-managed places--those with operating statements showing a break-even--negative cash flow can stretch bank accounts beyond breaking. "If you are not established," he says, "you'll find your creditors don't have much patience with past dues." Every year that a restaurant gets through the summer doldrums, it gains equity with its vendors, and it can negotiate longer terms. "It's not that they can finance your business," he says, "It's just that they know they will get paid, and they can partner up with you."

Temperature's Up, Business Is Down

Perhaps the most seasonal area in Southwest Florida is Fort Myers Beach. Tourism, for all intents, is its only business.

But that doesn't scare Michael Vorkapic, partners with Leo DiBiasi in Smokin' Oyster Brewery (a/k/a "SOB"), a three-month-old seafood house. "We'll do fine in off-season," Vorkapic says, "because we have the locals." He gets and keeps the locals by being involved in his community. "Whenever there is a benefit, it's planned out here." He also keeps the decor interesting: books on everything from voodoo to erotica and pictures of rock stars in their underwear.

"That, combined with good food and service..," he says. "There is no place like this place."

Vorkapic doesn't advertise. "I'd rather put my dollars into product," he says. "Everyone that comes here has heard about us in some way."

He is sage about success. "Consistency separates the ones who succeed from the ones who fail." He cites examples of consistency in product and price.

One example:

"If you open with six shrimp for $7.95, don't go bumping the price to $8.95 so you can make more money." Vorkapic is adamant. "We aren't going to do that here."

Asen agrees, and in the broadest sense. "You see all these places opening, copying Hooters, and nine out of 10 go out of business. It's not because the wings are better, or the girls are cuter. It goes across the board." Asen argues that deficiency in any area of operation can be fatal. "We try to do everything right."

Brown reads the indicators when competitors fail. "What is really telling is when restaurants close [permanently] in March." Those owners know they can't survive the long hot summer. But even more telling about a bankrupt operation is when it throws in the towel at the beginning of season. Brown lists one such operator on Naples' Fifth Avenue South that closed in December. The implication is that it had so mismanaged itself that it couldn't hire even a skeleton staff to keep it open through the easy months.

Recipe For The Future

"Is the fish fresh because we sell so much, or do we sell so much because it's fresh?" says Asen "The key is a vicious circle." He asks rhetorically, "Do we have good employees? Are we working it ourselves and setting a good example, and doing the right thing, all the time?"

Vorkapic is similarly introspective. "We have to have a place that is cool enough to draw the locals." He describes survey forms on the back of lunch menus, asking everything from the customer's preference in local bands to his (or her) choice of imported cigars.

Brown, too, espouses a strong work ethic. "It's not a service-hours-only kind of business."

"The [food] service industry is like walking on eggs all the time," says Asen.

"Even when the customer is wrong, the customer is right."

When asked if he would do anything different today, he drifts off. "For newer people to get into the market . if we were starting 20 years ago now..." and you can see him visualizing the juggler, with cash, labor and expertise rising and falling, just on the inside edge of control.

He doesn't finish.