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Chair Five
Restaurant was conceived in a drunken stupor during
the rainy season of 1982. It was really all just an
accident that things turned out the way they did
and turned into the Chair Five restaurant of today.
It all started one Friday evening after a good
afternoon of drinking at Alyeska Resort. I decided
to walk to a local unknown place called the Double
Musky Inn for the Friday night Happy Hour (still
legal in Alaska in those days). By accident I
stumbled, literally, into a vacant building, a dark
cavernous empty shell, formerly the original
Chilkoot Charlies bar. Although the
building had been vacant for 4 years and to put it
mildly was a dump, it somehow enchanted me and by
the next day I could think of little else. Within
24 hours I had a partner, Jesse my coworker at the
Sitzmart Restaurant of Alyeska Resort, and after
consuming numerous Scotch on the rocks had devised
a plan. We would quit our jobs, borrow some money
and presto, in 2-3 weeks be ready to open
Girdwood's hippest restaurant. What could be easier
than this project I reasoned? Being 23 years old
and possessing my as yet unused Business Degree
from Utica College of Syracuse University I was
ready to take on the world. A few more
drinking sessions and Jesse and I had a business
plan in order. We would sell 50% ownership for
$50,000 to a friend of Jesse's, sweat equity our
share of 25% each, buy the property for $210,000 in
six months when our lease option came due and life
would be peachy. We would cater to budget minded
folks with a simple menu that began with breakfast
at 6 am and ended with late night dinners at
midnight. Our projections showed (or guessed) we
could serve 200 people a day and be rich by the end
of the first year. Life doesn't get better than
this, we joked, as we consumed mass Scotch
quantities. Then reality started to ruin our
dream.... We had no sooner
signed our lease with a purchase option than I
picked up the newspaper and noticed that it was now
December 7th, also known as Pearl Harbor day. I
hope that's not a bad omen, I joked, but deep down
I felt that the easy part (daydreaming about self
employment) was maybe over. Less than 10 days later
the notice came in the mail that the owner of the
property was being foreclosed on and a week later
the notice of her filing for bankruptcy came. By
Christmas we got the news that our investors wanted
no part of a bankruptcy and were no longer
interested in putting up the remaining $45,000 for
us to complete the purchase and open the
restaurant. "Well, there's no
need to panic." I told Jesse, "Let's just go down
to the bank and borrow some money." I'll never
forget the goofy look on the guy's face at the bank
after I calmly told him of our misfortune with our
ex partners, the foreclosure, the bankruptcy and
all we really wanted to do was borrow a little
money, open for business and get rich quick. "Mr.
Griffin, I'd really like to help you," he droned,
"but that's just not possible at this time. You say
you quit your job so you have no income at this
time. You mention bankruptcy and foreclosure and it
all just has too much risk for our bank to get
involved in. But hey, after you've been in business
a few years and if you need a remodel loan or
something, be sure you come to see me!" A polite
handshake masked my true feelings of wanting to
punch his lights out and Jesse and I retreated from
the bank cussing and moaning all the way back to
Girdwood. The magic day
arrived on January 26th, 1983, exactly a year after
I had arrived in Alaska. What a day it was to
be.... We planned the big opening for 3 p.m. that
Sunday and the last frantic touches were still be
worked on at 2:45 when suddenly I spotted smoke in
the little cabin next door. Although only 12 by 15
feet, it was occupied by my friend, Susan, and her
9 year old daughter, Nicole. I quickly ran to the
cabin and threw open the door. Smoke and flames
shot out as I darted in and called for either. I
decided to check the small loft even though no one
answered back as the smoke was thick as mole asses.
All was well as they were not home, but my only
suit was now ruined and the presence of fire trucks
and the ensuing spectacle caused us to not open
until almost 5 o'clock. Little did we know that our
grand opening, as much of a failure as it was,
would be our best day for almost 4
months. With no cash to
operate we became desperate. We used our Alaska
Permanent Fund dividend checks of $1,000 (each
resident gets a check every year for living here
from the earnings of the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay,
nice huh!) and then proceeded to obtain and use
credit anywhere and everywhere we could. We bought
a toilet at Montgomery Wards, stereo at J.C.
Penney, nails and tools at Sears and applied for
lines of credit whenever possible. The beauty of
these stupid credit card companies is they have no
idea how desperate you are for money. Each month
having maxed out every card possible and made just
the bare minimum payment, lo and behold, the limit
was raised and we could use the cards to buy more.
We even got cash advances and used those to make
payments on the other cards, which, of course,
meant they would raise our limit even
more. When you start a
business it seems like you can never have enough
money. Sales are never enough and costs are always
more than you planned. And don't forget every where
you turn there is another fee, license or tax to
pay. On top of this Alaska had a new governor,
William Sheffield, a man who was not big on
alcohol, and showed it by not appointing an Alcohol
Beverage Control Board for 3 months. No board means
no licenses issued so we dragged on doing less than
$50 a day in sales on average with no hope in sight
from opening day in January until May 5th, 1983.
This was to be our salvation and also the start of
many a headache. With negative
cash flow, we had been offering some pretty lousy
food and had a reputation to match. By July, my
partner decided that 8 months with no salary and no
wife and kids (she left him in February), it was
time to move on. In exchange for half the business,
I agreed to buy him one last Scotch and exonerate
him from all liabilities, which by now were pushing
$30,000. We also had gone from the original staff
of 12 to one part time cook and me to do everything
else from bartender and waiter to janitor, cook and
maintenance man. I also had sold everything I
owned, including 100 shares of Chrysler for $2,000
that I had bought for $5 a share when Lee Iacocca
took control 2 years earlier... and my pickup truck
to pay the rent. Getting groceries
was now quite a chore. I would line up a ride into
Anchorage, 35 miles away, write rubber checks in
the hope that I could sell enough goods to beat the
check to the bank 2 days later and then hitchhike
back with the goodies and open the restaurant. By
the fall things were actually starting to improve
due to some strange phenomena: The pipeline was
starting to put out some real oil so the money
began to flow from the North Slope oil field
workers, salmon fishing had a record season and
then the crabbers came in with the biggest wads of
cash I had ever witnessed. It was so good some
times that my tips exceeded sales on occasion as
one drunk fisherman after another would stand up
and ring the bell as loud as he could, which meant
he wanted to buy a round for the house. They would
toss a crisp hundred dollar bill on the bar and
yell out "keep it, there's plenty more where that
came from" and other gibberish that only drunks can
think of. By the winter of '84-85 the cash was
actually flowing in the positive direction. After
our first year's sales of only $67,000, we were
able to double it by the following year. That winter I met
"Doc", a man who would add a great deal to Chair
Five. One night the front door opened and in walked
a quiet Texan who bellied up to the bar and
inquired about a local that he had met in Anchorage
several nights earlier. What started as polite
conversation ended up being 6 hilarious joke
telling hours later with me offering him a job with
no guaranteed salary and a place to stay. Benny,
most everyone called him Doc, was an instant hit
with the locals and tourists alike. While he
couldn't remember what he ate for breakfast he
could reel off joke after joke, story after story,
from 4 p.m. 'til the time we
closed. |
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