Great Taste Magazine

by Todd Lejnieks Winter 2007 Issue

For a long time, Applebee’s had the literal corner on the market in Antioch, California. It owned the only full service, casual dining establishment, serving a population of around 75,000. It was one of the busiest units in the 1000+ chain. There were other locally-owned diners, steakhouses and a pretty popular burger joint down by the delta but for a casual atmosphere, decent service and a consistent meal, Applebee’s was the only game in town, for years.

Enter Shawn Burns. Carrying a Master Brewer Certificate from UC Davis, about two weeks experience as a server at Olive Garden, an SBA loan, a shoebox full of cash from his friends and family, and a dream, he opened “Schooner’s Grille & Brewery” in April 2001, two weeks before Mother’s Day.

The two weeks leading up to Mother’s Day, there was a two hour wait in his lobby from opening to closing, every day of the week. Line cooks, servers, managers with years of experience, who Shawn had the luxury of hand-picking because he was the best game in town, stood in shock, ran out on shifts and no-call, no-showed. They literally couldn’t handle the business. US Foodservice loaned them a truck, which was parked out back and kept running, 24/7, to serve as an extra walk-in, as Schooner’s could not fit enough food product into the walk-in for even one day of service.

Shawn says, “Grown men were crying. We couldn’t believe it. I started hating the sound of the kitchen printer. It just wouldn’t stop. People always tell me, ‘What a great problem to have’! But it wasn’t. We just weren’t ready and we couldn’t handle it. It was a war and we were getting our asses kicked!”

His timing was so perfect that it couldn’t have been worse. “That place is so busy, no one goes there any more,” said Yogi Berra. He could have been talking about Schooner’s. Five years, three general managers, four chefs and one head brewer later, there were now 150,000 people calling Antioch home and a dozen fullservice restaurants within a five mile radius of Schooner’s Grille & Brewery. A market that had been decidedly under-saturated with restaurants, starving for a good place to eat, now had more choices than it could even go to in a month, if one were to eat out every night of the week. Everybody still loved Schooner’s but the honeymoon was over, and even loyal customers commiserated, “what harm could it be trying the new place down the street?” Alas, poor Schooner’s, stuck with more business than it knew what to do just a few years prior, was now in its third straight year of sales decline, the unfortunate victim of too much success combined with the corporate greed that was inundating an ever-growing but still too-small market. Chili’s, Mimi’s,Uno, Johnny Carino’s and a host of quickservice places were sprouting everywhere, able to wield their corporate marketing budgets and cookie-cutter business plans across the “Heart of The Delta” in East Contra Costa County.

After dining on the patio at Schooner’s and trying some of their award-winning beer, I met Shawn Burns. Having spent 20 years in the corporate restaurant world, I quickly saw what a gem Schooner’s was. The fiercely loyal and friendly staff, the phenomenal beer, the delicious food and a management team that cared a lot more about the people who came in, and even more about the staff that served them than some accountant-invented bottom line, all added up to a “grille and brewery” worth caring about.

A mutual friend introduced me to Shawn, who shared with me the stories of his opening. His dream as an award-winning Master Brewer to open a place that would showcase his beers and reflect his philosophies on how to run a business, putting his staff first and caring about the people he served in a sincere, not ‘how much can I get out of ’em way.’ “But I’m getting worn out,” he confided. “The profit margins are just never there. It seems like every time we move forward a step, some other chain opens next door…”

He paused for a moment. Shawn Burns is not a man to wear his emotions on his sleeve. Even in the most chaotic and hellacious moments of his restaurant opening, Shawn was the one carrying the standard, rallying the troops, shouting “Charge!” Having a conversation with him is like being the shuttlecock in a badminton game. Just when you think you’re going one direction, whack! You’re headed somewhere else, and usually it’s always his match point. But for this brief moment, Shawn seemed to be considering whether it was all worth it, and the scale was appearing to tip toward “No.”

It was my turn to share. I told him of my career working for corporate restaurant companies. How decisions about how to handle situations on the dining room floor were made by accountants. About how chefs spent time struggling with computers trying to find where percentage points of their food cost went, while their kitchens pumped out dinner service without them. About being told to cut a dishwasher’s hours while the CEO cashed in millions in stock options. As disillusioned as Shawn was with fighting the good fight, I was as disappointed in the corporate culture. I saw Shawn, and Schooner’s, as the David pitted against the Corporate Goliath.

We talked for quite some time, our viewpoints not always completely aligned but our philosophies about running a restaurant feathering nicely. If I had to encapsulate our philosophies, I’d call it, “Take Good Care of Your Customers and They’ll Come Back.”

In the end, we agreed, Schooner’s was at least worth fighting for.

“You’ve got something here, Shawn,” I told him. “You might be on the endangered species list, but you ain’t dead yet!”

A few meetings later, he hired me as General Manager, and we began the battle for Schooner’s very life.