-
News
article about the Red Barn. The writer did a great job, but there are a
couple of mistakes. Joanna is 16, not 28. Christina is 28. The other
mistake was about our costs, he said between 600 and 1000 per month from
our food suppliers. That was supposed to be per week. No big deal, the
article was written very well. We are sad we have to close, but this
sums up pretty much everything. Thanks for all your support!
Co-owner Joshua Savage jokingly delivers an iced chai to a favorite customer, Jane Gurney, of Weathersfield, Vt., as her friend Jess Hannigan, of Springfield, Vt., amusedly looks on at the Red Barn Bakery and Cafe in Ascutney, Vt., on August 13, 2015. The restaurant is closing at the end of the month, much to the chagrin of many loyal customers, with the owners citing high overheads.
(Valley News - Sarah Priestap)
Copyright © Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
Ascutney — Life hasn’t
been easy for the Savage family. A broken marriage of the parents, the
loss of their home to foreclosure, repeated moves, the early death of
one of the sons, have all challenged Bev Savage and her seven children.
Where other families might despair and fall
apart, however, the Savages pulled together, found hope, made friends
and won loyal customers through their homemade pumpkin bread, bacon
muffins with apple glaze and butter crumble apple pie. Yet despite wide
praise for the family’s comfort food skills and their reputation for
offering a warm welcome when hungry people walk through their door,
business realities are forcing them to close their Red Barn Bakery Cafe
in Ascutney.
“Our goal was to create a place where people
could come and have a meal, be accepted and loved,” Bev Savage reflected
last week sitting at the table in the restaurant’s small eating area
with her co-owner and son, Josh, by her side. “We created that
atmosphere and were successful.”
Josh Savage agreed. “There’s nothing we’d take back. We loved it that much,” he said.
And although the family’s restaurant venture
lasted only 13 months and barely squeezed out a profit, Bev Savage
affirmed there was a richer reward. “We touched some people,” she said.
More than some apparently.
In the days since Aug. 4, when Josh Savage
posted on the Red Barn’s Facebook page that the restaurant would be
closing at the end of the month, comments from stunned patrons have
poured in — 55 on the first day alone — along with thanksgiving from
customers far away as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Florida.
“I truly feel like there’s been a death in the
family,” wrote one. “Must have muffins before I move to Alabama!,”
hastened another. “The food (was) superb, and all of you personally made
me feel like part of a family,” a grateful customer confided. Many
offered simple condolences: “so sorry,” “very sad,” and “oh, no.” A
bereft fan summed up her reaction with a succinct: “Damn!”
The restaurant business is notoriously difficult
and the failure rate high, particularly among small restaurants that
don’t have the capital to weather the time it takes to build up a good
reputation through word of mouth.
Within the past year in the Upper Valley,
family-style eateries such as Shepard’s Pie in Quechee, 3 Guys Basement
BBQ in Hanover, the Polka Dot diner in White River Junction, and the
Friendly’s franchise in West Lebanon have all closed. It’s no different
in the Upper Valley than anywhere else: The Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported that 32 percent of new restaurants that opened in 2005 were
closed three years later, and 52 percent were closed within eight years.
And, despite its seemingly ideal location at the
crossroads of Route 5 and Route 131 in Ascutney, less than mile off
Exit 8 on Interstate 91, the Red Barn Bakery Cafe has shuffled through
four different owners in 10 years, a telling indicator of the industry’s
high turnover rate.
Bev and Josh Savage said taking over the Red
Barn last year was more a situation of an opportunity that presented
itself than the realization of a long-sought plan. “We saw a door open
for us,” Bev Savage said.
In the spring of 2014, Bev Savage said, funding
was cut for her job as intensive-needs paraeducator at the Elm Hill
School in Springfield, Vt., and she was looking for something to do.
“When I don’t have something to do, I find something to do,” she said.
At nearly the same
time, her son Josh’s fiancee was having breakfast at the Stone Arch
Bakery in Claremont when she overheard that the Red Barn Bakery and Cafe
had closed a couple of days earlier. She shot Josh a text message with
the news. Josh, who knew Red Barn well, responded, “WHAT?”
“I went there for years with her and her dad,” Josh Savage said. “It was always busy.”
He called his mom. He knew this could be an
opportunity for the family to work together and make money by taking
advantage of Bev Savage’s skills as a baker.
The Savages have always been a tight-knit clan.
When her kids were young, Bev Savage ran a home-baked goods business out
of the kitchen of their home in Perkinsville to bring in extra money.
Later, she had a cap-knitting business. And as a mother who home
schooled her children, she often was preparing meals for twice as many
when their friends with robust appetites came dropping in for dinner or
just snacks.
The following day, Josh and his younger sister
Joanna drove over to the Red Barn to “look in the windows,” Josh Savage
recalled. He contacted the restaurant’s owners, Carole Light and her
son, Erik Light, to inquire about the business that they had closed in
March 2014. The Lights had owned the Red Barn for 8 1/2 years . They had
purchased it from a “local lady” who had run it for about a year, who in
turn had bought it from the owners who had started it in 2003,
according to the restaurant’s website.
Josh Savage quit his job as a field manager of
Upper Valley telecommunications service provider WaveComm and, on June
3, 2014, Bev and Josh Savage closed on the purchase of the Red Barn’s
equipment and furnishings from the Lights and entered into lease
agreement with the building’s landlord.
Bev Savage said Carole Light expressed concern
over whether the new owners knew what they were getting into — running a
restaurant is nearly a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job between opening
the doors in the morning, food preparation before the noon lunch rush,
ringing up orders, closing in the afternoon, cleaning up afterward and
purchasing supplies on days off.
“It’s going to be like feeding 20 people at a time,” Bev Savage recalled being warned.
Given Bev Savage’s crowded dinner table of family and friends, “that’s not a problem,” she laughed.
The next several weeks were busy getting the Red
Barn in order. The family redecorated the interior, hanging pictures on
the walls of horses the they once owned. The kitchen area was repainted
white from a fading yellow (the sitting area’s red walls were left
unchanged). Menu chalkboards were added inside and outside to advertise
the daily specials.
Of course, there were the unplanned small
catastrophes that come with opening any new business: The freezer quit
and had to be replaced. Refrigeration units in deli case and sandwich
bar weren’t working properly and a repairman had to be called in.
Less than four weeks after closing on the
purchase, the Savages re-opened the Red Barn on July 1, 2014, expanding
the hours and breakfast menu to open at 6 a.m. Siblings Joanna Savage,
16, was enlisted to make sandwiches and Leah, 18, and Joanna, 28, came
in to help with the baking and work behind the counter.
Josh Savage, who had worked in both the office
and field at WaveComm, took on the business side responsibilities,
making purchases from suppliers, keeping the books, managing the
Facebook page and putting to use his personable manner as floor manager
and frontman for the operation.
Business was humming. Regulars would pop in and
order “The Vermonter,” a “killer breakfast sandwich” comprised of fried
egg, candied bacon, green apple, and cheddar cheese and served on
homemade cinnamon raisin bread — at $7.50, one of the most popular items
on the menu. Then there were the rotating weekly lunch specials, such
as bruschetta on a ciabatta roll with pesto; pulled chicken sandwich
with Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce; caramelized onion and maple bacon
grilled cheese; fresh mozzarella BLT with pesto, to name a few; plus
freshly baked quiches, homemade soups and a parade of ever-changing
desserts such as mini cheesecakes covered with dark chocolate sauce and
lemon whipped cream and “trifles,” cup-size strawberry or chocolate
creams with an Oreo planted on top.
Stephy Sumner, who writes the southern
Vermont-focused food and product review blog Steph’s Cheers and Jeers,
visited the Red Barn this past spring and raved about the restaurant in
an April post. Sumner praised The Vermonter as the “ultimate Vermont
breakfast sandwich” and was “super impressed with the food and staff,”
noting “I ADORE the atmosphere, it screams rustic Vermont” and she told
readers she would be making the Red Barn her “go-to spot for breakfast
and lunch.”
Not everything on the menu was a hit, Josh
Savage acknowledged, with the cold chicken breast sandwich never
catching on. “Most people who like chicken breast want it hot,” he said.
As evidence, he cites the heated version of the sandwich, which is
selling well.
But despite the solid customer base — the
restaurant served between 100 and 200 people a day — it was not enough
to overcome the small restaurant’s nemesis of the rising cost of food
and supplies and the fixed cost of overhead and fuel, Josh Savage
explained.
“The biggest misconception in the restaurant
business is that buying food in bulk is cheaper off the truck,” Josh
Savage said, referring to the suppliers from whom restaurants typically
purchase their food. He pointed out that eggs — he would buy a case of
15 dozen a week — would cost $3 a dozen from a supplier but $2.69 a
dozen at Market Basket in Claremont. And butter, for which the supplier
would charge $2.79 a pound, could be purchased at Market Basket for
$2.59 a pound.
It doesn’t sound like much, but “it adds up,” Bev Savage said.
So why the difference ?
As every student learns in his or her
introductory economics course, the middleman adds a layer of costs:
Savage said the supplier’s price includes the cost of delivering to the
restaurant’s door.
In total, the food vendor tab was running
between $600 and $1,000 a month, and Savage would spend $400 more per
month buying food on his own at local markets. Other fixed monthly costs
included $600 to $700 for electricity, nearly $900 in building rent,
$130 to $200 for propane fuel, and $400 for paper products such as
plates, napkins and paper towels. Insurance ran $1,200 annually.
Add it up, Savage said, and fixed costs ran between $4,000 and $6,000 a month, depending on the time of the year.
Nor did raising prices, the usual fix to cover higher costs, solve the problem, Savage said.
Six months into business, Savage said, he raised
the price of soups and quiches by $1 and 75 cents on all pastries, pies
and cakes. “It didn’t have much of an effect,” he said. “Food prices
continue to rise, but I can only pass on so much of that to my
customers.”
After the first six months in business, at the
end of 2014, Josh and Bev Savage had only about $6,000 in profits,
according to a copy of the restaurant’s tax filing.
Savage said he consulted several business
people, including one person with deep experience in the restaurant
business, and opened to them his books to find out if he was doing
something wrong. One adviser, he said, observed that $6,000 in net
profit on a small restaurant wasn’t too bad, given the profit came after
he and his mother paid themselves.
“ ‘No,’ ” Josh Savage remembers replying. “ ‘We didn’t pay ourselves. That’s all the money we made.’ ”
After going over his financial worksheets, Josh
Savage said, his adviser told him, “ ‘You did everything right. I
couldn’t have done better.’ ”
The message: There wasn’t anything they could
do to make to make it come out differently. They had no choice but to
close the business.
“We were pretty much done,” Josh Savage said.
Neither he nor his mother are bitter from the
experience, and both said they have no regrets. As a family that long
ago learned how to make adjustments and bounce back from adversity, Bev
Savage said, she is not worried about what she or her son will be doing
next.
“When we came in here we felt this was a steppingstone,” she said.
What that will lead to she does not know. But, she said, as a person of faith, she believes “God provides.”
John Lippman can be reached at 603-727-3219 or jlippman@vnews.com.
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