Familiarity breeds customers......

I stumbled across a little non-descript restaurant tucked away in the corner of an “L” shaped strip mall. Well, actually, I didn’t stumble across it, my sister and I took my brother there for breakfast. He’s been going there almost every day for a while now….. Until three and half weeks ago, when he had a stroke, and can no longer get there on his own.

If you were just driving through the strip mall, chances are pretty good you wouldn’t even notice it, or if you did, it wouldn’t be someplace you’d make a mental note of, “Hey, I gotta go and check that place out.”

When you walk in, you see a few rows of booths, not particularly large booths, just big enough to seat four, and you’re almost shoulder to shoulder. The décor is nothing to write home about……there’s a little counter with about six stools. You can get breakfast, lunch or dinner anytime of the day.

The food is good, it’s not spectacular, but good, plentiful and very reasonably priced. The few times that I have been there, and it was not during what I would call a peak time of the day…..there always seems to be a steady stream of people wandering in.

So in these tough economic times of Michigan, where businesses are dying on the vine right and left, what keeps this little non-descript place busy? Plain and simple, it’s the staff. After being absent for three and half weeks, my brother had barely gotten in the door when everyone, the servers, the cooks, the owner, were shouting out greetings to him. The cook behind the counter was shouting hello, the cook who was in the back kitchen poked his head through a window to say hi….the servers ran over to greet him and see how he was. They ran to get his coffee. Very cool.

So I started watching everything around me. This is the quintessential neighborhood restaurant. The staff chatted with all who came in…retirees, for a late breakfast, folks who worked in the area came in for a quick lunch…most who came in were treated like they were long time friends, by people who cared.

There is a line from the theme song of the old television show “Cheers,” that sums up this little oasis in a strip mall…..”People like to go where everybody knows their name.”

I used to work in a place like that, but those days are long gone….it’s nice to know there are still some of these little neighborhood havens around.