One Year Later

Any new business owner would love to face the biggest hurdle Rumrunners had in its first year of business: The Cape Coral restaurant drew many more customers than expected.

"The volume of customers that we took on from day one was greater than the kitchen or the facility was able to handle," says Jeff Gately, one of four partners who started the waterfront restaurant and bar in November 2003 in the Cape Harbour community.

Gately, who built his reputation as a restaurateur locally as co-creator of Bistro 41 in Fort Myers' Bell Tower Shops and Aqua Grill in Naples' Waterside Shops, had believed it would take time to grow a customer base of people who did not live in Cape Harbour. He was wrong.

"We simply got run over with 600, 700, 800 customers at a time; and the only way to facilitate them until we really got our bearings was to keep 25 percent of the facility closed off, and only operate it on a structured, limited basis," he says.

The restaurant's storage and refrigeration space also had to be expanded. "We had to redesign the kitchen to a degree to handle more volume," he says.

Rumrunners, which is along a canal that feeds into the Caloosahatchee, has become popular with professionals who don't live in Cape Harbour. The restaurant has found a niche by offering a "casual upside" menu and decor, with a wide variety of fish dishes and tropical drinks.

"While we thought the location was good-being on the water-we felt it would be a challenge to get people off the main drag, to pull them in off of Cape Coral Parkway," says Gately. "We thought that would be difficult for us, but it hasn't been."

He and his partners expected to grow into the building gradually. "With 300 seats, it's a large operation." he says. "It would be rather presumptuous of us, as owners, to say, 'I'm going to fill all 300 seats the first day.'"

He has few first-year regrets. "If we were to do it all over again, maybe we'd simplify the menu," he says.

"Having too much business is a blessing and a curse," he adds. "But we managed through it, and are looking forward to the challenge of doing more business this year as the word has gotten out that we are open."

-John Francis