Welcome to In the Weeds, a new publication covering the business of independent restaurants.
After a brief break to report on the Sysco/Restaurant Depot news, I’m back with part two of a three-part series I’m calling “Under New Ownership.” Opening a new restaurant is hard, but what about taking over a restaurant that’s already operating? It’s complicated. I spoke to three restaurant owners about the process of buying and operating an established restaurant. (Read part one: Marc Forgione’s path to owning Peasant restaurant.)
There are a lot of opportunities to buy restaurants right now. The business broker We Sell Restaurants said several thousand to well over 10,000 restaurants are listed at any point. And one of the benefits of buying an established restaurant is the established customer base. After Krista, whose story is below, bought Gather, a restaurant in Maine, the restaurant maintained much of its customer base.
Also in this edition: Michelin introduced the American Great Lakes edition, Sysco/Restaurant Depot predictions from a restaurateur who used to work under the Sysco CEO, and what OpenTable’s new exclusivity terms mean for restaurants.
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Krista Cole photographed by Nicole Wolfe.
Yarmouth, Maine, is only a 20-minute drive from Portland, but the diners there are pretty different. As an owner of restaurants in both Yarmouth and Portland, Krista Cole knows this well.
Krista opened her Portland restaurant, Sur Lie, in 2014, building it from the ground up and earning accolades for its tapas menu, local products, and hospitality. In 2023, Krista was a James Beard semi-finalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, and Sur Lie was a semi-finalist for Outstanding Hospitality.
When Krista discovered that Gather, a restaurant set in a Masonic Hall in Yarmouth, was for sale, it appealed to her because of its similarities to Sur Lie.
“I always loved their values and what the restaurant was centered around,” Krista told me in a video call a few weeks ago. “I felt like it really did coincide with the values of Sur Lie, because even though we’re in Portland, we’re very much a neighborhood kind of local restaurant. And I was born and raised in Maine, so I just love a small town.” Yarmouth is a town of about 9,000. Whereas Portland has about 70,000 residents.
Gather in Yarmouth, Maine
When Krista bought Gather, she kept the name but freshened up the logo, branding, and interior. The menu is completely different, too, but still focused on local producers and straightforward dishes. There’s a kids’ menu but no kids play area, as the previous owners had.
“We definitely want to be family-friendly, but we also want to provide a dining experience that aligns with the [Sur Lie] brand,” she said. We’re “finding that really nice balance. But I think people were kind of excited to see a change there, to be honest.” The restaurant first opened in 2012. Even with the changes she made, Krista was able to keep the restaurant open during the transition.
Portland brings in tourists who frequent Sur Lie, but the restaurant still has its fair share of locals. Being a local restaurant in Yarmouth, however, means something different. Many diners come to Gather multiple times a week. And the reservation books look different at both restaurants. Reservations are rarer at Gather, and Krista notes that taking credit cards to hold bookings at Gather, which is a necessity in Portland, would never fly in a small town.
“At Sur Lie, we’ll book out reservations for the whole night,” she said. “So pretty much what you’re looking at in the books, minus walk-ins at the bar, that's pretty much what you're going to see for covers, whereas at Gather, it could look like no one’s coming in, and then the whole town comes in.”
Gather in Yarmouth, Maine
But there are efficiencies. Both restaurants use the same tech, and much of the staff is trained to work both locations. While it’s rare to have a regular at Gather visit Sur Lie, the restaurants are a short-enough drive for employees.
“When you have a dishwasher call out, I can literally get a dishwasher from Sur Lie to go up to Gather,” she said. “Or we run out of napkins at Sur Lie, or we can't meet a minimum with our distributor to order. We just need something small, but there’s a minimum of what we need to order or spend to get a delivery. So we’ll just tack it on to the other restaurant’s delivery, and I can run and grab it.”
While there’s been a learning curve, Krista often finds that differences between the two restaurants can work in her favor. The slower summer at Gather is “nonstop” at Sur Lie. And she can sometimes convince a large group that won’t fit at Sur Lie to make the drive to Gather.
“I can kind of punt between the two, which is really nice.”
Thank you, Krista, for sharing your story.
Side Dishes:
What do OpenTable’s new exclusivity terms mean for restaurants? According to Rebecca Levine-Hough, New York-based Altamarea Group’s VP of client hospitality: “It would really be reworking our entire back-end reservation system to accommodate that request.”
Real talk on opening a restaurant today from Emeril Lagasse:
The Michelin Guide introduced the American Great Lakes edition. Tourism bureaus across six states got together for this one. The guide will cover Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh.
During a trip to Las Vegas last year, I made a conscious effort to eat off the strip, and Esther’s Kitchen and Bar Boheme were some of my favorites. They are both owned by James Trees, who has focused most of his career on serving locals outside the big casinos. Until recently. For Nation’s Restaurant News, I spoke to Trees about his decision to open High Steaks Vegas atop the Masquerade Tower at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, and how he brought his independent-restaurant spirit (and his own sourcing and bread-making) to the large hospitality group.
There's a really good reason to take Milena Pagán's predictions about the Sysco/Restaurant Depot seriously. Long before opening Little Sister restaurant in Cambridge, MA, she was at CVS working for the current Sysco CEO, Kevin Hourican, and Chief Commercial Officer, Judy Sansone.
More restaurants and bars are listing the ABV of each cocktail. The move appeals to drinkers who don’t want to get too sauced and those who want the most booze for their buck.
Hiring and keeping a dishwasher has always been hard. Immigration crackdowns and teens’ low interest in the position have made it harder.
Front of House:
An espresso martini shot, like this one at Okaru in Roslyn, New York, might be the perfect way to nudge diners into ordering one more drink. It worked for me.
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—gloria