Taking over a shuttered 1892 landmark and bringing back its people
At Greensleeves in 2016 I rehired the crew from before the closure instead of starting fresh.
Greensleeves came to us in November 2016. Starting clean looked easy: rename it, hire a new team, act as if the place had never gone dark. I went the opposite direction and called back the people who worked there before it shut.
A closed landmark holds two things a new owner cannot purchase. One is the town's memory of the room. The other is staff who greet regulars by name. Swap out the staff and half of what you paid for goes with them. So the old crew returned, Tellus phased the renovation around live service, and the local press ran the reopening as the town getting something back instead of an outsider arriving.
Underneath them, the operation still needed rebuilding. A string of chefs came and went before the right general manager arrived, and it took a PR campaign and city events to fill the room. Still, the trust on opening day was genuine, and it belonged to them, not to me.
On a distressed takeover, people who already know how to run the place usually beat a clean slate in value. Their standing with the community appears on no balance sheet, and a new owner is likely to discard it before anything else.
Story details
| Project | Greensleeves Steakhouse |
|---|---|
| Type | Standing on principle |
| Year | November 2016 |
| Firm telling | on the Common Ground wiki |