Table for How Many?
By Brenda Craig
Published in the Kamloops Business Magazine May 2008
The chef and owner of Bistro 326, Ryan Clark is talking fast, very fast. He’s on his flip phone and there’s a food supplier with him right now in the restaurant. He’s placing his order for the next week and he’s interviewing for wait staff and chefs later in the day and he’s got catering job for group Rocky Mountaineer tourists in the evening, but he can make some around 11 am to talk. It's only nine in the morning and this guy is zooming.
“I’m 29 and I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was 14, my wife and I have twins at home, another baby on the way and a dog and we’re renovating at home” says Ryan Clark. He’s got dark spiked hair and looks pretty cool in his back chef’s jacket, black trousers and black rubber shoes.
He leans forward, sitting very secure on a leather parson’s chair, his arms resting on one of the restaurant’s marble top tables. “This used to be a schnitzel house” he says “but we got a good deal on the lease and it’s got really big kitchen that any chef would love to have” he says.
And it has definitely been ‘de-schnitzeled’ since Ryan and his wife Brook took over. Giant framed mirrors hang on the modern sea foam coloured walls and a dozen or so sixties retro style lights give the room a bit of mood. In word, it’s kind of hip. It’s not Yorkville, but it definitely has style.
“We started with four staff and now we have 16” and Clark says
“I haven’t had a paycheck in 4 years, but my wife’s an accountant so
she makes everything work.”
Clark’s Bistro 326 on Kamloops Victoria Street is now in its 3rd year. Most restaurateurs are pounded into steak tartar before the first 12 months so by industry standards, the Ryans have cooked up a minor miracle.
If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen
It is easy to get burned badly in the restaurant business according to
Leonard Nakonechny from The British Columbia Restaurant & Food Services Association. “It’s a mean world” he says with heavy emphasis on the ‘e’ sound in the word mean.
Nakonechny runs a sales and marketing business in Vancouver, but he grew up in Kamloops, worked at Chapters View Point Restaurant as teenager and has been involved in restaurants one or another for the last twenty years. “The general rule is” he says “if you’re in business after five years, you’ve made it, before that it is a staggering amount that goes under.”
The BCRFA represents about a third British Columbia’s 11,000
restaurant owners, everything from cafes to fine dining. According its statistics, about 8 out 10 restaurants go flat as pancake before the can
get established.
“It is amazing, how many people don’t have a marketing plan, or a business plan.” and says Nakonechy “I think it is knowing who you are from a brand proposition, what are you going to be known for that’s crucial.”
Kamloops has a very small number of restaurants compared to Vancouver or Victoria, but the Kamloops City Hall’s business licensing office records show there are currently about 280 establishments that serve food in the city.
Over on the north shore, Mervo’s restaurant would have to be considered your basic diner. It’s burger and fries, bacon and eggs all the way. “I started working in a Greek restaurant and they didn’t think my name sounded greek, so they called me Mervo” he says.
He real name is Merv Shull. It hard to see much difference between the way he looks and his customers. On this particular afternoon Shull has a real estate agent waiting to talk to him because he is planning on selling up and moving to Thailand to retire with his wife after 25 years in the business. He interrupts our chat to wave say thank you and good bye to a couple of regulars that come in for lunch every time they come down from Williams Lake.
“I’m 29 and I’ve been in the restaurant business since I was 14, my wife and I have twins at home, another baby on the way and a dog and we’re renovating at home” says Ryan Clark. He’s got dark spiked hair and looks pretty cool in his back chef’s jacket, black trousers and black rubber shoes.
He leans forward, sitting very secure on a leather parson’s chair, his arms resting on one of the restaurant’s marble top tables. “This used to be a schnitzel house” he says “but we got a good deal on the lease and it’s got really big kitchen that any chef would love to have” he says.
And it has definitely been ‘de-schnitzeled’ since Ryan and his wife Brook took over. Giant framed mirrors hang on the modern sea foam coloured walls and a dozen or so sixties retro style lights give the room a bit of mood. In word, it’s kind of hip. It’s not Yorkville, but it definitely has style.
“We started with four staff and now we have 16” and Clark says
“I haven’t had a paycheck in 4 years, but my wife’s an accountant so
she makes everything work.”
Clark’s Bistro 326 on Kamloops Victoria Street is now in its 3rd year. Most restaurateurs are pounded into steak tartar before the first 12 months so by industry standards, the Ryans have cooked up a minor miracle.
If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen
It is easy to get burned badly in the restaurant business according to
Leonard Nakonechny from The British Columbia Restaurant & Food Services Association. “It’s a mean world” he says with heavy emphasis on the ‘e’ sound in the word mean.
Nakonechny runs a sales and marketing business in Vancouver, but he grew up in Kamloops, worked at Chapters View Point Restaurant as teenager and has been involved in restaurants one or another for the last twenty years. “The general rule is” he says “if you’re in business after five years, you’ve made it, before that it is a staggering amount that goes under.”
The BCRFA represents about a third British Columbia’s 11,000
restaurant owners, everything from cafes to fine dining. According its statistics, about 8 out 10 restaurants go flat as pancake before the can
get established.
“It is amazing, how many people don’t have a marketing plan, or a business plan.” and says Nakonechy “I think it is knowing who you are from a brand proposition, what are you going to be known for that’s crucial.”
Kamloops has a very small number of restaurants compared to Vancouver or Victoria, but the Kamloops City Hall’s business licensing office records show there are currently about 280 establishments that serve food in the city.
Over on the north shore, Mervo’s restaurant would have to be considered your basic diner. It’s burger and fries, bacon and eggs all the way. “I started working in a Greek restaurant and they didn’t think my name sounded greek, so they called me Mervo” he says.
He real name is Merv Shull. It hard to see much difference between the way he looks and his customers. On this particular afternoon Shull has a real estate agent waiting to talk to him because he is planning on selling up and moving to Thailand to retire with his wife after 25 years in the business. He interrupts our chat to wave say thank you and good bye to a couple of regulars that come in for lunch every time they come down from Williams Lake.
“When you’re a small operator you have to be involved with the
people, I used to have a pizza place and if I wasn’t working some people wouldn’t order.” Merv Shull turns and to greet another regular. “Hi Tom, be with you shortly.”
It may seem obvious but along with some pretty good business
sense and the necessary marketing plan, successful restaurant owners have to have the right personality.
“The people who want run a restaurant are people people, they can
talk to anybody,” says the BCRFA’s Nakonechny, “They are very good actors in the sense that can put a profile on with any particular guest.”
Kamloops restaurateur Martin Creutz Lechleitner at one point owned four restaurants in Kamloops. Frustrated by staff shortages, Creutz Lechleitner cut back to two establishments, the Amsterdam in Valley view and The Commodore Café and Lounge downtown. Before he took over the Commodore location last year it was fondue house. Creutz Lechleitner says “people’s tastes are changing in Kamloops.” He says his at the Commodore customers are “people from bigger cities, Vancouver, Calgary and Seattle, people who move here for retirement, they have been around and they have higher expectation levels.”
If you happen to thinking about buying Mervo’s on Tranquille or getting into the restaurant racket, Leonard Nakonechny from the BC Restaurant & Food Services Association has one more bite of food for thought. Make sure you investigate kitchen. “That’s were all the money is, the heating vents, the ducts” he warns. Having to repair or rebuild it is recipe for failure. And he says “most restaurants run a line of credit.” If you can’t pay your suppliers, they won’t deliver and your restaurant will be done like dinner.
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