I bought Greensleeves Steakhouse 50/50 with a partner: a shuttered 1892 landmark in Redlands, the old Joe Greensleeves. The price was effectively nothing. Somebody had tried to burn the place down, so what we actually took on was the lease and whatever was still standing inside the walls. The first real win was getting that lease extended, because a cheap building on a short lease is just an expensive way to move out. Then we put about $600,000 into the renovation. Tellus phased it, a piano bar, a rooftop, a cigar lounge, so the room could keep serving while the work went on.
The building was the easy part. A dark restaurant does not reopen, it gets rebuilt from scratch. We ran a PR campaign so the town heard the name again, got press, and put on events for the city so the room filled with people who lived there. Underneath that, chef after chef until the kitchen could hold a standard, and then a general manager who finally turned the place around. He was the key person, and he ran it through me.
By the time I exited in January 2022 the restaurant was doing about $2.1 million a year at a 4.8 star standard, and it had held that through COVID. We own the restaurant business and the brands outright; the space was always leased. I learned a lot about the restaurant business in those years. The building was never the asset. The lease term, the town's memory of the place, and one manager who could hold a standard when I was not in the room, that was the whole business.