Greensleeves Steakhouse: extend the lease, then rebuild the room

What it is

Greensleeves Steakhouse sits in the old Joe Greensleeves building on Orange Street in downtown Redlands, a restaurant since 1892 and one of the oldest business buildings in the city. By the autumn of 2016 it was dark after an attempted arson, its staff scattered.

In November 2016 Fowler took it over 50/50 with a partner, for effectively nothing. It was a traditional restaurant deal: the business, the brands, the lease and everything inside the walls, from the kitchen and the bars to the stock. The building itself stayed leased, so every dollar later put into the room was spent on somebody else's real estate.

The goodwill was the asset and the building was the container. What the place needed was a launch, not a restoration.

What Common Ground did

• Extended the lease before spending a dollar. A renovation on a short lease is a gift to the landlord, and a landlord holding a burned, dark building has every reason to extend before the tenant spends and much less reason after.
• Tellus Design + Build, Fowler's own company, had the design sets drawn by mid-November 2016 and announced the renovation to the local press on December 13. It phased about $600,000 of renovation around live service instead of closing: first a cosmetic reopening in a modern vintage feel so the former staff had jobs to return to, then the upstairs piano bar, the patio and rooftop bar with live music, the cigar lounge with a walk-in humidor, a private tasting area and private event rooms, each opened as it finished.
• Rehired the former cooks and servers, who carried the regulars' trust, so the reopening read in the local press as the town getting something back.
• Ran the reopening as a launch in a set order: former staff first, then press and a public relations push, then events for the city so the room filled with people who would come back on a Tuesday.
• Fixed the plate dish by dish and answered early reviews in public with the fix: a scallop plate rebuilt around four or five larger scallops, a porterhouse moved to a thicker cut. Several chefs followed, and none fixed the restaurant, because the gap was the floor, not the kitchen. The turnaround came with a general manager who owned the slowest night and reported to Fowler: the standard was his, the nights were the manager's.
• Put food cost and labor on one weekly clock every Monday, timed to the purchasing cycle so a bad week showed inside the same pay period. Ran the menu through a contribution margin and popularity matrix, tied perishable ordering to the lesser of shelf life and supplier lead time, bought slow short-life features against reservations, and moved sides a la carte.
• Kept the restaurant open through 2020 and 2021 rather than go dark a second time, using the patio and rooftop built in phase two. Mistakes were made along the way, and fixed in public.

Results

• About $2.1 million a year at a 4.8 star standard at exit in January 2022.
• The business reached its exit-year level within about two years of reopening, and after the pandemic years it returned to that level.
• It still serves today under the Greensleeves name.
• The lesson Fowler carries forward: when the obvious fix has been made and the business still does not work, stop hiring another version of the product and find the person who owns the standard. Next time he would go to the floor first.

External links

• Public data room: Greensleeves Steakhouse data room

Public record

• Greensleeves Steakhouse
• PRWeb, November 22, 2016: Local Business Owners Rally to Save Historic Redlands Establishment
• PRWeb, December 2016: Tellus Design + Build commences Greensleeves renovation
• Greensleeves Steakhouse on Yelp
• Greensleeves Steakhouse on Tripadvisor
• Greensleeves Steakhouse on OpenTable
• Joe Greensleeves on Yelp, the prior operator's closed listing
• Greensleeves Steakhouse on Facebook

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