Page 106 - SOUTHERN OREGON MAGAZINE FALL 2019

chow | local habit

RESTAURANT

LONGEVITY

Chris Dennett

Jerry Clarkson

ost people know that owning a restaurant can be difficult: long
Mhours, low profits, high turnover and no static employee cost.
According to popular myth, 90% of new restaurants close within the
first year of business, and by 10 years in, almost no one is still open.
(I’ll get to these figures in a moment). As a person who has a restaurant
that will turn 13 years old in December, I’m curious about what makes
the difference between the five-year restaurant, the 15-year restaurant,
or as you’ll find in this piece, the 30-plus-year restaurant. The ultimate
question is what makes these places different? Is it luck, timing, per-
sonalities, or something else?

According to both Forbes and RestaurantOwner.com the 90% fail-
ure rate over one year is simply not true. Somehow it has become a
common belief, even among owners themselves, but the figures show
something different. Michigan State and Cornell did a study a few
years back that looked at a 10-year period of restaurant ownership.
According to their study, the attrition rate after the first year was 27%,
after three years it was 50%, after five years it was 60%, and after 10
years it was 70%. It’s still not the rosiest of pictures, but it’s nothing
compared to the “doomed-to-fail” narrative that is so common.

For a moment, let’s forget the real metrics and ask ourselves, with that
level of assumed failure, why on earth does anyone get into this busi-
ness to begin with?

Here’s what every owner of a 30 plus-year restaurant has in common:
they are all committed to the food industry. It’s in their bones, what
they love to do, what they are still committed to doing on a day-to-day
basis. Love of industry is exactly why they got into it and part of why
they’re successful. It’s a special kind of crazy. A successful restaurant
owner is crazy about service and food the same way CPAs are crazy
about numbers and entomologists are crazy about insects.

The Arbor House’s Leah Calhoun is involved because it is a family busi-
ness she knows and loves. “I grew up in the restaurant,” she says. “I was
four or five when my dad started it, and I started washing dishes when
I was 14.” While it’s gone through the hands of her parents to her, you
hear in her voice how much she loves doing it.

Evans (after teasing that it might be a lack of psychiatric care) also
acknowledges it’s a love for the food industry that got him involved; his
background coming from fruit science at Oregon State, and working
for Harry & David. He wanted to keep his family in the Rogue Valley,

104 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | fall 2019