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Home Sweet Sophie's
How one young couple achieved gourmet success in the restaurant business

by nate koch

Michael and Laura Schaller sat in their truck and counted the headlights as they drove past the empty lot in the business park. They took headcounts of the employees in the area and tallied up the surrounding homes. They showed up in the mornings, throughout the noon hour and at night. They watched, waited and noted.

But the Schallers weren’t stalking prey. They were hunting for a spot, the ideal location, for their new restaurant, which opened its doors in April 2005. Where an empty lot once sat full of tall, thick grass and weeds now stands Sweet Sophie’s. Equipped with a banquet hall for weddings and parties, Sweet Sophie’s offers guests creative entrées, a comfortable atmosphere and reasonable prices. However, for any entrepreneur, turning a bed of weeds into a thriving restaurant involves hard work, determination and a sense of humor.

 “There’s this big pie-in-the-sky feeling that you can just open up any type of restaurant anywhere in the world,” Michael says. “And that’s really not the case. You have to have a reason for why you chose the area where you’re opening up. You have to have a concept of what you want to do with a restaurant.”

Michael moved from Madison to New York City in 1987. He attended culinary school in New York and later opened his first restaurant. Millennium Bar & Grill, just off of Wall Street. It was also in New York where he met his wife, Laura, and after closing Millennium Bar & Grill, he opened Prowl on the Upper East Side. After the 9/11 attacks, Michael and Laura decided they had enough of New York City and moved back to Wisconsin.

When the Schallers decided to open their own restaurant, creating a highly detailed business plan was their first and most important step. They spent years researching and learning about everything they needed to know when it came to opening a restaurant. Restaurateurs recommend doing first-hand research, using the Internet and reading articles to find some of this information.

But Laura says the best way to gain this knowledge is by observing and working in the field.  “Do an internship. Work for nothing if you’re going to work with a great person that you’re going to learn from,” she says. “Put yourself in the environment, soak up as much as possible and keep an open mind. Figure out what works and doesn’t work for other people’s business, and take that out and apply it.”

Real-world experience is a key advantage when going into the restaurant business. Being young also has its advantages. Laura says it takes a certain energy level to be able to run a restaurant. “Just look at us today,” she says laughing while she prepares for the Friday night rush and a Saturday wedding.

 “There’s a certain devotion,” Laura says. “You have to be willing, at some level, to give up a good part of your life. We do this because we love it. You have to be prepared to work. You have to be prepared to be in the trenches. You have to be prepared to deal with so many things that come along. It’s not just creating a menu and saying, ‘Let’s go for it.’”

John Surdyk, director of INSITE, a research institute at UW-Madison for technology entrepreneurship studies and education, agrees being young when opening a restaurant has its advantages.

 “People who are in their 20s and 30s have an immense advantage in some ways,” he says. “A lot of folks will say you need to have a certain amount of credibility in your industry and be a veteran of an industry. But 20- and 30-year-olds are unique in that they don’t tend to have massive mortgages, they don’t have children in school, they don’t have obligations that can sometimes prevent people from pursuing their own entrepreneurial visions. So they are at a point in their life where they are actually risking less, in some ways, than anyone else would at a later point in their lives.”

Being financially ready to open a restaurant is another important factor to success in the restaurant industry. In fact, poor financing plays a big part in why more than 75 percent of restaurants will not survive, with 30 percent of those not making it through the first year and 50 percent not getting through a second. However, the industry continues to grow because people are eating out more. But be prepared to not make money for the first year.

 “It doesn’t matter how great your restaurant is,” Michael says. “The first year, if you make money, you are a superstar. It takes a while for people to know that it’s there, for people to get used to it and for people to want to come back. It’s just one of those things.”

To find initial funding to open a restaurant, most people first turn to the family and friends who know the people looking to start a business and who know their capabilities. Surdyk says family and friends are often a great source because they do not have a lot of terms. Surdyk jokes that it can, however, make holiday gatherings a little more interesting when grandma wants to know how the business is doing because she has a stake in its future.

 “We were lucky enough to have family members who had knowledge in the real estate business,” Laura says. “We were also smart enough to find a bank that wanted to support the project, not just fund it. Find someone that wants to be involved.”

Banks can also be a solid source for funding. In fact, many banks have areas of specific interest, and some institutions like to work with entrepreneurs or small business owners. Government programs also offer many opportunities for those looking to start a restaurant with an abundance of local, state and federal programs designed to support small businesses, especially for women and minorities.

While the business plan and finances are important to the success of opening a new restaurant, Michael and Laura say being surrounded by good people ranks at the top. They credit much of their own success to working with great people.

 “The cream will rise and the bad will go away,” Laura says. “Now the bad has gone away.”

They also credit their success to allowing each other to excel in their particular areas of expertise, each offering something special.

 “Running a restaurant is a lot different than just designing or delivering a menu,” Surdyk says. “Those entrepreneurs who tend to be most successful are those who recognize their own weaknesses and try to hire to them.” He suggests trying to find the people who have those needed skills and can run those aspects of the business. “It’s having the people in place to render the whole business viable that is really the most important thing,” he says.

The Schallers' restaurant has now opened and they are settled into their new place. They feel that Sweet Sophie’s Waunakee location makes a couple’s wedding a destination, with family and friends traveling to their special day. At the same time, they did not want to make it so far out that nobody would want to come to a Friday night fish fry. After hours of research, hard work and counting passing cars from their truck, Michael and Laura chose the site to build Sweet Sophie’s and began construction in October 2004.

Surdyk says Wisconsin is a great place to start a new restaurant. “At the highest levels, we’re starting to see the investment in our infrastructure that will make us as well organized and effective in enabling entrepreneurs as you will see in any state. Wisconsin is going to surprise people how much we actually have here,” he says. “Wisconsin is increasingly going to be recognized as a more competitive and welcoming place for entrepreneurs.”

Laura vividly remembers standing in subzero temperatures on a slab of cement, a few studs up, selling the place to brides and grooms-to-be. “There was one day I was out there for so long, my feet were so frozen they hurt,” she remembers. “We'd have to take shifts. I ended up in the car blasting my feet with the heat that day.”

©curb magazine - winter 2005
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