Restaurants for all seasons
by Debi Boucher StetsonThe restaurant industry on Cape Cod is undergoing dramatic – and sometimes painful – transitions. Those highly dependent on summer business are discovering that tourism patterns are changing at a threatening pace.
Shorter vacations and more home rentals mean fewer customers in the summer. The rising costs of energy, insurance and ingredients add to expenses – with little wiggle room to increase menu prices.
Fortunately, the growing preference by empty nesters to vacation during the spring and fall shoulder seasons offers a new customer base. So too does the rising tide of second-home owners and retirees, many of whom use their Cape residences year-round.
These older tourists and second-home owners bring with them different tastes than the traditional younger family with two or more children. An analysis by Cape Business discovered, for example, that there are nearly 4,000 second-home owners who identify themselves as gourmet cooks and fine diners. That’s a far cry from the fish and chips crowd.
So, how can a restaurant thrive in this brave new world? How can an establishment succeed in serving a tourist visiting the Cape for the first time, but also meet the demands of year-round residents and second-home owners?
The consensus among five established and durable restaurants in Yarmouth: Long-term success means staying consistent while adjusting to changing populations and tastes. Provide customers with the quality they’ve come to expect, but don’t let the venue get stagnant.
Cape Business interviewed five restaurateurs whose success reflects not only on their own establishments, but also on Yarmouth’s changing economic and demographic landscape.
Yarmouth House
This establishment has undergone several renovations and expansions to keep up with both the quantity and quality of customers. It also has built up a thriving year-round events business. And it has worked hard to keep its core staff in place.
“We can do two, three, four functions at a time,” said owner Ted Zambelis. With several dining rooms and a bar in the front portion of the building on Route 28, the restaurant also has a large function room in the rear of what was once a private home. Last Christmas, the Yarmouth House hosted 80 holiday parties.
The restaurant was launched in 1977 by Zambelis’ father-in-law, Jerry Kounadis, who died last year, and his wife Bessy. Zambelis came on board 15 years ago after marrying Angie, who now runs Yarmouth House with her husband. She is responsible for the restaurant’s interior, where wood beams are hung with tiny white lights and, in some areas, white tulle. Contemporary paintings add color in rooms of wood wainscoting and white linen-topped tables. Angie’s brother Christo oversees the kitchen.
The restaurant now seats 285. The earliest expansion added the front dining room, which features a huge water wheel set in a rock garden.
The Yarmouth House has served quite a few political celebrities. “Gov. Romney’s been here, Jane Swift, Weld – we’ve had all the governors in here,” Zambelis said. “Mayor Menino has been here.”
The year-round restaurant maintains a staff of 50 that ratchets up to 70 in the summer. Many have worked there for years. “Our maître d' has been here 20 years. Our chef has been here 18 years, our bartender 20 years,” he said. “Those are all core people for our business.”
The family also owns a seasonal restaurant down the street, Christopher’s Steak House, which they launched six years ago. “It’s more a fun place,” Zambelis said, “a summer place.”
But at Yarmouth House, “we’re hard-core year-rounders.”
Captain Parker’s
Captain Parker’s maintains a year-round staff of 65, and its owner has studiously avoided any pink slips to assure consistent quality over a 25-year record of staying open every day of the year.
The Route 28 pub and restaurant’s roots trace to Boston, where more than two decades ago a city school teacher, Gerry Manning, opened it for what he thought would be purely a summer business. Soon after, however, he received a pink slip of his own, and his plans abruptly changed. “It was a shocker,” he said. Not knowing what else to do at the time, “I applied for a year-round license.”
That turned out to be a good move, as word of the cozy, riverside pub spread among locals in the off-season. “We were just a small place then,” he recalled, with just one dining room, a bar and a kitchen.
By 1985, Captain Parker’s enlarged the kitchen and added a new dining area dubbed the River Room. The restaurant now seats 129.
“We’ve been open every day since 1981,” Manning said, “except one really bad snowstorm when the governor declared a state of emergency. Holidays, Christmas, snowstorms, Hurricane Bob – you name it, we’ve stayed open.” That dependability, he believes, is one key to its durability.
The restaurant business is not for everyone. “It’s a lot of hard work,” said Manning, whose teenage daughter waitresses at Captain Parker’s in the summer. “The hardest thing about the restaurant is having a consistent product, so you’ve got to keep a good staff,” he added.
Manning maintains a staff of about 65, which increases to 80 in summer. Sensitive to pink slips, he strives to provide steady employment for his staff. “I’ve never had to lay anyone off.”
He is most proud of the restaurant’s clam chowder, which has taken home awards from the Boston and Newport chowder festivals and been featured on four different Food Network shows. He even had it appear as a “Jeopardy” question.
Manning is very enthusiastic about the planned marina to be built across the street from Captain Parkers. “I hope it will extend the season,” he said. “Winters are still hard on the Cape.”
Old Yarmouth Inn
For this venerable establishment, the formula has been treating staff like family and renovating the restaurant, especially to accommodate off-season patrons.
Sheila Fitzgerald and Arpad Voros, who have owned the restaurant for 11 years, pride themselves in knowing the names of most repeat patrons, as well as where they like to sit and what they like to eat.
Come the colder months, Fitzgerald emphasizes his wood-paneled pub, which he is expanding, and a huge fireplace near the entrance – sure signs that the restaurant is seeking out more year-round customers to complement a sunny porch room.
The inn – which dates back to 1696 – is located on Route 6A in Yarmouthport across from Parnassus Books, is open year-round, “seven days a week except Christmas,” Fitzgerald said.
They weren’t prepared at first for how busy they would be in the winter. “We used to expect that our business would fall off after summer, but we were out straight right through New Year’s,” Voros noted.
With several separate dining rooms, the Old Yarmouth Inn lends itself well to functions of all sizes, and Voros said the events help the business tremendously.
Although it is still licensed as an inn – the oldest one in town – the couple is not currently using that way. “All the rooms are now occupied by family and the restaurant,” said Voros, whose mother is among the residents. “Innkeeping takes its toll, so we decided to focus on the restaurant.”
Voros grew up in the business in New York City, and he later worked in finance. “There isn’t a better combination” to prepare one for owning a restaurant,” he said. Fitzgerald, who worked in marketing, enjoys the restaurant business despite its constant demands. One key to success, she emphasized, is a strong staff that is not transient.
“We don’t have anybody who’s been here less than two years,” and many have been there for much longer, she explained. “We treat our staff like family,” Voros added.
With 140 seats, the restaurant is high on customer service. Voros points to the need to prepare dishes that aren’t on the current menu, which changes regularly.
“If the ingredients are there, we’ll make it for them,” Voros said. “We can’t please everybody, but we certainly try,” added Fitzgerald.
Oliver’s
Its owners view the summer influx as a bonus. “We depend more on the year-round residents” including retirees, explained Glen Ormon, who opened Oliver’s in 1983 with two brothers, Dale and Rick.
It’s now down to two, with Dale running the kitchen and Glen running the front. But a new threesome developed when Glen’s son Greg came to work in the family business four years ago after college and a stint in Boston’s financial world. “He missed the Cape,” Ormon said of his son.
Now, Ormon is ready to step back and let the younger generation run things. “We get along, but I kind of want to get out of his way. He looks at things differently than I did 20 years ago, which is a good thing – you kind of get stale.”
The restaurant, which seats 233 people, is located on Route 6A in Yarmouthport, so close to the Dennis line, Ormon noted, that many people think it is in Dennis.
Ormon points to consistency and price as keys to long-term success in the fickle restaurant business. “We’ve always kept our food moderately priced,” he noted. “It’s more of a local neighborhood place than anything else. We have customers who eat here every night.”
The Ormons are considering renovating the restaurant’s interior. “You can’t stay static,” Ormon said. “You have to change with the times.”
Abbicci
Change resonates with Marietta Bombardieri, owner of Abbicci on Route 6A in Yarmouthport. Last year, she closed the restaurant she’s owned since 1988 and spent six months on a major renovation that essentially gutted the interior of this historic building.
“It was a really, really tough project, but I’m glad I did it. I did it pretty much on instinct,” she said, explaining that she felt the business was stagnant. The building was in disrepair internally, badly in need of a new electrical system.
She also wanted a new look, one that would attract a younger crowd. “I wanted a more mixed clientele,” she said. “I’m 66, and I had a lot of clientele in their 70s and 80s. I wanted more people in their 40s.”
She spent more than $1 million on the project, which transformed the interior into a sleek, modern bistro to showcase the Mediterranean fare that has become Abbicci’s hallmark.
She is pleased with the results: “The ambience is drawing people.”
It’s not the first time she has transformed the place, though this was a much more far-reaching renovation than anything undertaken before – and it meant she was closed for the entire summer season last year.
When she first bought the restaurant in 1988, Bombardieri ran it under its then- existing name, the Cranberry Moose. In 1992, she closed for six weeks, completely redecorated and reopened as Abbicci.
Prior to buying the property, she owned La Cippolina, an upscale Italian restaurant that later became the Japanese restaurant Inaho.
A self-taught chef, she grew up in the food business, as her grandfather and father owned a bread bakery in Boston’s North End. She began helping out there at age 8, but it was in her grandmother’s kitchen that she really learned to cook. “I used to be able to get out of going to the store on Sundays if I stayed home and helped her make dinner for 12 to 14 people. That’s how I started cooking,” she said.
After going to art school, she taught in the Bourne schools, and later had a pottery business. She lived for a time in Provincetown, where her then-husband was an educator.
Now, she and her husband, Lawa Rinpoche, who is originally from Tibet, live right behind Abbicci.
“I have a really good management team in place,” she said. “I have a very good chef, a very good manager, a very good sous chef.” She also speaks highly of her wait staff, a number of whom have been with the restaurant for some time.
All told, she employs 36 people year-round, a number that rises to 55 in summer.
A good restaurant with good food and a comfortable ambience, she said, “attracts people on both sides” – meaning customers and employees.
Published in The Villages of Yarmouth May/June 2007
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