Bucketfuls of enthusiasm

Krimo’s lease was due to come to an end in December 2014. So, thinking ahead, as we didn’t want to extend it, Karen and I decided in late 2011, to offer the business to the head-chef as we had always planned to do from the beginning. After all, we had ourselves been given an unbelievable break by the people who had helped us purchase our first restaurant in 1985. Two amazing gentlemen, Bert, a bank manager and Steve, a building society manager who, between helped us raise a 100% mortgage for the Seaton Carew property and for whom, I will forever be grateful. 

At the time, Karen was an ordinary housewife having previously worked at Fine Fare, until our Adam was born. I was working as manager at a Peterlee restaurant, having earlier started as a kitchen porter. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together. I had always dreamed of opening my own restaurant, but it all seemed like pie in the sky, until Bert and Steve gave us the key to our future. 

The old motto that we opened Krimo’s with £250 and bucketfuls of enthusiasm still makes me smile as we had a lot less than that amount at the time.

So, I approached Colin, the head-chef to see if he was willing to take over Krimo’s. He asked for time to think and in early 2012, he and his wife who he had met at work, declared that the idea was very appealing but that they weren’t confident enough to take on such an enterprise. 

Karen and I decided to put Krimo’s up for sale, and as she had earlier expressed her wish to stop working at the restaurant, I would have had to step in. Just after Valentine’s Day 2012, she retired, and I took over the day-to-day running of Krimo’s. Although I wasn’t very thrilled with the idea of going back to the coalface, I decided to take on the challenge of raising the profits which had drastically slumped since the start of the credit crunch. I had to make a very unpalatable decision to cut some of the high wages, reduce staff and work full-time in the restaurant in order to make it attractive to a prospective buyer. 

One of my first cost-saving ideas was to get rid of the tablecloths and get new faux-leather chairs to upgrade the look and feel of the restaurant. I knew that a few of our customers would not be happy with the “modern” look, but this exercise was going to reduce laundry costs considerably. Within weeks the new look was overwhelmingly accepted, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

At the time I partook in the BBC Tees lighthearted Headline Challenge set by Peter Barron of the Northern Echo, where listeners are encouraged to come up with a better headline for a topical story than his. I have to confess that, as my name had always been associated with our restaurants, my initial reason for taking part in the morning competition was slightly as a marketing exercise. A few people came to Krimo’s as a result of hearing my name on the radio. Personally, as long as people came to the restaurant, it didn’t really matter how they heard about it. 

Nowadays, as I am no longer in the restaurant business, I still try my hand at the early morning competition, but only as a fun challenge.