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The Brickell Bridge Restaurant
Life is a learning experience, and as a young person entering the world of business, I always knew that I had an awfully lot to learn. I have often looked back on my first few years and tried to make a note of the mistakes I made and what I might have learned after making them. If I had to counsel young people taking their first tentative steps in a business venture, or even starting a new job, here is what I would tell them.
Try to acknowledge the possibility that you are not as smart as you might think you are. If you think of yourself as too smart, you will probably make some mistakes you could otherwise avoid. You may need your coworkers friendship someday, but you could lose it in an instant by being too overbearing, cocky, or arrogant. A little humility will go a long way. I never knew anyone who learned anything by listening to himself talk.
One of the most important pieces of advice I got came from Harvey C. Fruehauf—who led the Fruehauf Trailer Company during its important years of expansion—was: “Act in haste and repent at leisure.” I met Harvey in 1956, and he became a valued friend, business associate, and mentor. His counsel and friendship meant a lot to me, and I often wished that I had known him a bit earlier.
I drove the family to Miami again in February of 1951, when Dr. Nichol was moving his practice from downtown Miami to a new facility called the 550 Building, which was then under construction on Brickell Avenue. It was the first commercial office building constructed on the west side of the Miami River. Dr. Nichol advised me that the new building was looking for a tenant to operate a restaurant on the ground floor. He suggested that I consider the possibilities of leasing this space. I looked at it, but I was a bit overanxious and careless in my evaluation of both the location and the South Florida restaurant market itself.
It was important for me to judge the potential of opening a restaurant in Miami. To begin the process, I ate in a number of busy restaurants that I had heard about. I was amazed at what I discovered. Most restaurants had long lines of people standing out front waiting to get in! After standing in a number of those lines and putting up with frustrating delays in getting seated, I often received poor service and mediocre food. I was unimpressed with the restaurant operations, but what did impress me was the thought that if these restaurants could attract so many customers, then I could make a fortune in Miami. This was a case of quick, impetuous judgment. I had set myself up for the shock of my life.
I was looking for a good excuse to move the family to Miami and, without carefully examining the situation, I signed a lease for half of the ground floor space in the 550 Building and committed myself to opening a restaurant there. The lease provided that I would occupy this space at a monthly rental of $884. I jumped into this deal without taking the time to draw up a business plan, work up a menu strategy, or consider my limited financial resources.
I figured that I could attend to all those details later. Mine was a case of careless examination, arrogant overconfidence, and a lack of judgment. I convinced myself of a couple of things: that Miami was in desperate need of more good restaurants, and that this was a good location. I was dead wrong on both counts.
After signing the lease, I began to think about what kind of restaurant would be best suited to that location. I decided that the restaurant would serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner and stay open from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., seven days a week. The layout would include of a soda fountain designed to serve short orders during breakfast and lunch hours. The remaining portion of the dining area would feature tables, booths, and waitress service. The restaurant would seat a total of eighty customers.
The plan seemed simple enough, but life was about to become complicated. When I returned to Wilmington, I faced the job of finding a manager to take over the Colonial Inn. I needed to do this before I could move the family to Miami. I decided to keep the Colonial Inn because I expected that it would help to pay our living expenses in Miami. Another problem involved selling the farm, and this meant that Nancy and the children would have to remain in Wilmington until we could find a buyer. I planned on returning to Miami in early May after I finished the design for the restaurant. This would give me time to order the equipment and get the business ready to open in early fall.
It was when I returned to Miami in May that I received the shock of my life. The restaurant activity I had witnessed in February was practically nonexistent in May! It had never occurred to me that Miami was a seasonal city that practically shut down during the off-season and summer months. I had made a serious mistake. Miami in the late ’40s and early ’50s was a seasonally oriented destination resort city, heavily trafficked during the winter months and woefully quiet during the rest of the year. February happened to be the peak of the winter season. Many of the restaurants I had eaten in at during my February visit were closed and boarded up for the summer. The locals would say that during the summer months, a person could “fire a cannon down the middle of Flagler Street and not hit anybody.” I developed a real fear about the chances for having a successful opening for my new restaurant. The thought of a possible failure weighed heavily on my mind. This considerable worry was aggravated by the fact that Nancy and the children weren’t with me. I was very lonely, and I knew that it was an equally lonely experience for Nancy. I had put the whole family in a very difficult position, and I was terribly annoyed with myself. The only good that came out of the situation was that it taught me a valuable lesson.
While living alone in Miami, I had plenty of time to think about the mistake I had made in acting so impulsively about this restaurant project. Long before the restaurant began to take shape, I knew that I was going to have some real problems. The surrounding market and the location itself left a lot to be desired. I was located in a small building with fewer than sixty people employed there. Most of the tenants were doctors whose patients were generally older and not very interested in eating in a restaurant. Most of these people were sick and had other things on their mind. The building would be empty by the time dinner came around, and it would be closed on Saturday and Sunday. The other problems were that I couldn’t expect very much business to come from the surrounding neighborhood. There was a real question as to whether or not fast-moving traffic would stop at a commercial restaurant located in an office building. These ended up being valid concerns.
I determined that if I survived this crisis I would be more careful and analytical in making any business decisions in the future.
Fortunately, Nancy was able to sell the farm even though it took several months to do it. I flew to Wilmington and drove the four of us back to Miami in July after making arrangements with a moving company to transport our personal effects to Florida.
The Mackle Company was building new and inexpensive homes by 1951 in the range of $12,000 to $13,500. Purchase of these modern, attractive homes only required a minimal down payment, with very attractive mortgage financing terms available to the purchaser. Nancy and I didn’t even have enough cash to make the low down payment, but we were able to lease one of these new homes and moved into the subdivision in July. We had only a few weeks to get settled before the Brickell Bridge Restaurant opened for business in August.
All of the fears and worries that had troubled me since May proved to be completely warranted. When the restaurant opened, there was very little business and my early promotions were unsuccessful in attracting customers. Faced with very high rent, the fact that my sales were only averaging three thousand dollars per month during August, September, October, and November was enough to keep me in a state of deep concern. I was seriously questioning whether or not I could make a go of the place. There wasn’t much doubt that if business didn’t pick up soon I was going to go broke. I remember one particular Sunday when we only took in eight dollars for breakfast, twelve dollars for lunch, and ten dollars for dinner. It was a long ride home that night. I was burdened with
