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Origin: Greensleeves Steakhouse

I bought a shuttered 1892 landmark in Redlands with a partner and ran it until January 2022.

In November 2016 I bought Greensleeves Steakhouse, 50/50 with a partner. The place was a closed 1892 landmark in Redlands, formerly Joe Greensleeves. It cost close to nothing, because someone had tried to burn it down. What we really took on was the lease and whatever still stood inside the walls.

Our first real win was extending the lease, since a cheap building on a short lease only costs you a move later. After that we put about $600,000 into the renovation, and Tellus phased the work, with a piano bar, a rooftop and a cigar lounge, so the room could keep serving while construction went on.

The building was the easy part. A dark restaurant gets rebuilt from scratch rather than reopened. A PR campaign got the town hearing the name again, press followed, and we put on events for the city so the room filled with residents. Below the surface, the kitchen went through one chef after another before it could hold a standard, and only then did a general manager turn the place around. He was the key person, running it through me.

When I exited in January 2022, the restaurant was bringing in about $2.1 million a year and holding a 4.8 star standard, both of which it had kept through COVID. The restaurant business and the brands are owned by us outright, though the space was always leased.

I learned a great deal about restaurants in those years. The building was never the asset. The business came down to the lease term, the town's memory of the place, and a single manager who could hold the standard with me out of the room.

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