Work record / Operating / Greensleeves Steakhouse

Greensleeves Steakhouse: lock the lease first, then rebuild the room

In November 2016 I took over Greensleeves Steakhouse in Redlands with a partner, and I ran it until January 2022. I got the lease extended before I spent anything, and that order decided the rest.

The seat

I was co-owner and operator. I took the place over 50/50 with a partner in November 2016, and stayed through the turnaround, the pandemic and the exit in January 2022. The restaurant is in Redlands, California. The deal ran through Three Trails LLC, now Common Ground Ventures, with Tellus Design + Build as the builder.

Sector	Hospitality and restaurants
Type of work	Turnaround and operating leadership
Where	Redlands, California
Years	November 2016 to January 2022
How long	Five years and two months
Through	Three Trails LLC, now Common Ground Ventures; Tellus built.
Credits	Common Ground Jesse Fowler, Co-owner and operator

What I was brought in to decide

Greensleeves Steakhouse is in downtown Redlands, on Orange Street, in what used to be Joe Greensleeves. Diners have eaten in that building since 1892, and few business buildings in the city are older. By autumn 2016 it sat dark after an attempted arson and the staff had scattered.

I took it on in November 2016 with a partner, 50/50, for effectively nothing. It was a standard restaurant deal. We got the business, the brands, the lease, and every item inside the walls: kitchen, bars, inventory. The building was not ours. We leased it, so any dollar spent on the room went into someone else's real estate.

I saw the goodwill as the asset and the building as the box it came in. The place needed a relaunch, not a restoration.

What we did

I extended the lease before I spent a dollar. Renovating on a short lease hands the landlord a gift. A landlord with a burned, empty building has every reason to extend before the tenant spends, and far less reason once the tenant has.
My own company, Tellus Design + Build, got the design sets drawn up by mid-November 2016 and told the local press about the renovation on December 13. It phased roughly $600,000 of work around live service instead of closing the doors. First came a cosmetic reopening with a modern vintage feel, so the old staff had jobs waiting. After that, each space opened the moment it was done: a piano bar upstairs, a patio and a rooftop bar with live music, a cigar lounge that had its own walk-in humidor, a private tasting area, and rooms for private events.
I rehired the cooks and servers who used to work there. They had the regulars' trust, and the local press read the reopening as the town getting something back.
I ran the reopening as a launch with a fixed order: the former staff first, then press and a PR push, then events open to the city. The goal was a room full of people who would come back on a Tuesday.
We repaired the plate one dish at a time, and when early reviews came in we answered them publicly with the repair. The scallop plate was rebuilt around four or five larger scallops, and the porterhouse moved to a thicker cut. Several chefs came and went, and none of them fixed the restaurant, because the gap was on the floor and not in the kitchen. What turned it was a general manager who took ownership of the slowest night and answered to me. The standard was mine, and the nights were the manager's.
Every Monday, food cost and labor were read together on one weekly clock, lined up with the purchasing cycle, so a bad week surfaced within the same pay period. We ran the menu through a contribution margin and popularity matrix, set perishable orders by whichever was shorter, shelf life or supplier lead time, bought slow-moving, short-life features against reservations, and sold sides a la carte.
I kept the restaurant open through 2020 and 2021 instead of going dark a second time, using the patio and rooftop we built in phase two. We made mistakes along the way, and we fixed them in public.

Results

When I exited in January 2022 it was running at about $2.1 million a year, holding a 4.8 star standard.
It hit its exit-year level roughly two years after reopening, and it came back to that level after the pandemic years.
It is still open today under the Greensleeves name.
Here is what I carry forward. Once the obvious fix is made and the business still fails, quit hiring another version of the product. Find the person who owns the standard. Next time I would go to the floor first.

The lesson

Get the lease secured before you put money into the room, or the renovation just pays rent on somebody else's decision.

Public record

Stories from this work

A dead restaurant, rebuilt, and the one person who carried itAt Greensleeves the building was the small part; the standard lived in one general manager, and I built the place to run without me.Choice beef, and the cut nobody noticesAt Greensleeves and Mike Fields BBQ, meat drove the cost, and moving to corn-fed choice beef raised margins.Origin: Greensleeves SteakhouseI bought a shuttered 1892 landmark in Redlands with a partner and ran it until January 2022.Taking over a shuttered 1892 landmark and bringing back its peopleAt Greensleeves in 2016 I rehired the crew from before the closure instead of starting fresh.The steakhouse's parent company became Common GroundI let Three Trails grow into Common Ground in place so the company kept its real age.

Questions about Greensleeves Steakhouse, answered

Firm record

Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Greensleeves Steakhouse on the Common Ground wiki.

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