FOOD AND FAMILY

Similarly, it is through pleasing customers that a restaurant can be successful. My family has owned many restaurants, and we have seen some successes and some failures. The primary cause of these shifts was how well the restaurant adhered to the wants of the customers. In this paper I will discuss three different restaurants that were started by members of my family. During World War II, my great-grandparents, Myrtle and Henry Bach, owned Bach's Slumber Village, a sandwich shop located in the center of a group of rental cabins. Ken and Florence Hanna opened Ken's Steak House in 1935; Flo Hanna was my great-grandfather's sister. My grandparents, Judy and Patrick Howard, owned The Country Steak House, opened in 1968 and closed in 1974.

When my grandmother, Nancy Bach, was young, her family owned a sandwich shop in the center of "Bach's Slumber Village", a motel that rented small cabins to travelers in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. The restaurant spanned the years of U.S. involvement in the Second World War. Bach's Slumber Village was opened in August 1941, five months before Pearl Harbor was attacked. The sandwich shop was then sold a year after the end of World War II in 1945.

Because food was rationed during the war, the restaurant did very well. "This was the prime family livelihood, so we were able to acquire enough to keep the sandwich shop open and thriving," explained my grandmother. "We also maintained a counter where we sold bread, milk, candy, soda and ice cream to the neighbors. It was a good war-time place to get a few necessities and a treat besides".² My grandmother's family was very involved in the war. My grandmother planted a Victory garden - "the war-time thing to do" - and my great-grandfather kept a large vegetable garden to share and can fresh produce.

Everyone in the family helped out with Bach's Slumber Village. My great-grandfather, Henry Bach, worked seven-day weeks on the PA railroad, so he was not able to work at the restaurant very often, although he did help in the evenings. My great-grandmother, Myrtle Bach, did most of the work required at the restaurant: she did all of the baking, cooking and serving. The children also helped by doing the dishes and weeding the yard; my grandmother also played the piano as entertainment for the restaurant. She remembers playing late into the night on the day World War II ended. "Our restaurant was open all night serving food to happy Americans. My piano was in the dining room and I had the pleasure of playing for the big event. I was eleven years old and loved every minute of the flag waving evening".³

Bach's Slumber Village was a successful restaurant; since Myrtle and Henry Bach were able to secure food during the rationing, customers were drawn to the shop. The sandwich shop catered to the needs of consumers, who wanted somewhere to enjoy a meal or pick up some basic necessities during the war. Although the restaurant was never an upscale place, it well served the needs of its customers.

The Country Steak House, located in Rockland Massachusetts, was opened in 1968 by my grandparents, Patrick and Judy Howard. My grandfather was always interested in food and cooking. His father was Italian, and his mother was from the South; both were wonderful cooks, and combined, the family recipes created "an interesting mix of different ethnic types of cooking"⁴. Pat Howard ran and did most of the cooking for the restaurant, while my grandmother made pies and other baked goods. My father and uncles did other work in the restaurant; my father, the oldest, was the bartender as soon as he turned 18, while his brothers helped with the cooking.

The restaurant operated on a very low margin; my grandfather felt that the best way to succeed in the restaurant business was to offer the lowest prices in comparison to competitors. As apparent from Figure 5, an advertisement, Pat Howard tried to attract customers mainly by offering lower prices than his competitors. "Try Us, You Can Afford To Come Back" was the restaurant's slogan and general attitude towards business. Although the restaurant was able to offer very low prices, the profits were very slim. The food was excellent; some of the offerings, such as the Italian salad dressing, were the same as those offered at Ken's Steak House. However, the restaurant tried to give people a lot of food for their money, and the difference between the price it cost to keep up the restaurant and the money the restaurant took in was very small. My father explained: "The economy wasn't in such great shape. It was the Nixon years, the early seventies, and there was a lot of heavy inflation; that led to pressure on restaurants to offer low prices"⁵.

There were several reasons for the sale of The Country Steak House in 1974. The clearest cause was that my grandfather, Pat Howard, had become ill with multiple sclerosis and was, as my grandmother explained, "having increasing difficulty running [such a] physically demanding business"⁶. It didn't help that my grandfather tried to compete on price as much as he did; although he was successfully able to offer low prices, the profit margin was so low it was difficult for him to continue to run the restaurant faced with physical challenges.

Ken's Steak House was perhaps the most successful of the restaurants owned by my family. Ken's salad dressing is now sold around the world on supermarket shelves, and the famous Italian dressing especially has enjoyed great fame. The salad dressing recipe, along with recipes for various other menu offerings: the Famous Boston Scrod, and the marinara sauce, have been passed down in my family for years as secret Ken's recipes.

I am related to Ken and Flo Hanna through marriage. Flo Hanna is my great-great aunt. She is my father's stepfather's mother's sister. My great-grandfather was born Peter Bacigalupo, but switched identities with a man named Jim Howard so that he would appear old enough to join the military. Flo Hanna, Ken's wife, was originally a Bacigalupo - she was Peter Bacigalupo's sister. Because my grandfather Patrick Howard knew many of the family recipes Flo used at Ken's Steak House, they were used also at the Country Steak House and have been passed down to my generation.

Ken's Steak House was successful for several reasons. Many of the menu offerings at the Country Steak House and at Ken's Steak House were the same; both had traditional steak house fare, and they also shared some of the recipes passed down on the Bacigalupo/Howard side. However, Ken's Steak House was considerably more successful than the Country Steak House. This is in part because of how each conducted business; although both sought to please their customers and both offered excellent food, Ken's competed mainly on quality and service, while the Country Steak House competed mainly on price. Also, Ken's opened in 1935, and by gaining ground in a difficult time period for Americans - the Great Depression - the restaurant was already an established fine eating-place long before the Country Steak House opened. By the time the Country Steak House opened, there was a great pressure on restaurants to offer low prices, and since the Country Steak House was a new restaurant, it bent to these pressures. Another advantage Ken's Steak House had was that Ken was a skilled businessman, and not only did he have the abilities to achieve a substantial profit, he chose an area that he speculated would have great promise. Route Nine in Framingham, the location he chose, burgeoned from "Starvation Alley" to "The Golden Mile"⁷.

Although it may seem otherwise, the success of a restaurant is not all about the food it offers. Certainly this is important; customers return to a restaurant only if they enjoyed the meal. However, most restaurants would not be started if the owner did not believe that the food offered was excellent. Even though many restaurants do have good food, only a select number are able to succeed. A restaurant's success is gauged by many factors: the price of the food, the cost of maintenance of the restaurant, the tastes of the clientele, the location of the business, and the quality of service, to name a few.

In the case of Bach's Slumber Village, my great-grandparent's restaurant opened during World War II, the customers wanted a reliable war-time place to get foods they needed, and a homemade baked good or sandwich as well. This made the restaurant a success. In the case of The Country Steak House, the restaurant tried to gain more customers by offering good food for low prices. Although it succeeded in doing this, the restaurant operated on such a low margin it was difficult to earn great profits. The restaurant got to the point where employees would need to run to the store to purchase ingredients only after an order was received, so as not to buy anything unnecessary and stress the budget any farther. Combined with my grandfather's increasing struggles with multiple sclerosis, the restaurant became impossible to run well, leading to its sale in 1974. In the case of Ken's Steak House, the restaurant succeeded because it was able to offer customers high-quality meals combined with good service in the key retail area of Route Nine. Although the restaurants in my family have each had their successes and their failures, each has influenced and contributed to my family's identity.

Endnotes