It’s got potential…

Having reached the conclusion that I was very unlikely to get back to University, I decided to give catering a try as a career. The next step from managing a restaurant was owning one.
I took advantage of a free business course offered by Easington District Council and learnt the rudiments of profit and loss reports and cash flow forecasts. I knew how to cook and manage a restaurant but the main thing missing was the money to make it all happen.
In the years that I worked in Peterlee, I saved my tips with the TSB and was able to buy an old Ford Cortina ex-taxi for £275.
I often came Hartlepool to look at empty properties, visit estate agents in the hope of finding the right location for a restaurant. Karen called it “having a bee in my bonnet”.
One day, a woman who dined very often at the Peterlee restaurant, was behind the desk at Manners and Harrisons estate agents. “Krimo, I’ve got the ideal place for you!” she said.
I confessed that I did not have two pennies to rub together, let alone buy a restaurant.
She insisted that Karen and I went to view it. The place had had many makeovers in the past, the last one being a restaurant called Davy Jones Locker, which had been closed for two years. It stunk of stale frying oil. The flat above was in a dreadful state with plaster peeling off the walls. I was not very impressed but Karen, who had never worked in a restaurant before, said: “It has potential.” That was my green light.
I had a meeting with the manager of the TSB Horden branch, Bert, as he happened to be a regular at the restaurant where I worked. He asked if I had any money. If Karen had money. If either of our parents could lend us some. The answer to all the questions was the same: no.
He asked me to give him a few days to see if he could help. A long week later, he arranged for me a meeting with the manager of the Hartlepool branch of the Newcastle Building Society. I went to see Steve. He too had dined at my place of work on several occasions. He asked if I had any profit and loss forecasts. I handed him an old school notebook in which I had various calculations. He told me many times over the years that I only got the mortgage because of that notebook. It had proved to him that I had done my homework.
Steve lent me 90% of the asking price and Bert 10%. With their help, Karen and I, who had until then lived from hand to mouth in a council house, were able to purchase our first place.
As soon as we were handed the keys, all our family and friends rallied round us and helped clean, paint, repair, sew, iron… Karen’s sister made all the tablecloths and napkins from material they had bought at Chester-le-Street market.
Michael, an ex-YTS apprentice who had worked with me in the past, painted the entire frontage for a couple of portions of fish and chips from Don Bees.
I designed our first door sign, wrote the menus, and met up with suppliers. One of them, a fruit and veg man nearly put a damper on my enthusiasm when he told me that only a fish and chip shop would succeed in Seaton Carew. I realised later that he was very old-fashioned and stuck in his ways when he told me he had wanted the box of “Manguy Tout” he had received by mistake.
I rang the job centre for help to find me some catering staff. They even arranged for an interview room and booked the applicants at half-hour intervals. It was then that I discovered that one only needs no more than five or ten minutes to fathom out whether the job seeker is successful or not.
I put a poster in the window to advertise our imminent opening. May the Fourth 1985!