Diner hopes comfort food keeps business cooking

Opening a business is a gamble. Opening a restaurant, in particular, is an even bigger one. And doing it during a recession? Now that takes guts.

But Susan Zick isn't worried. The owner of Suzie's Kitchen, a recently opened home-cookin' restaurant in Rosemount, has heard the daunting statistics about how few independent restaurants survive -- even in better economic times -- but she's got no fear.

"It's about time somebody opened a mom-and-pop shop in Rosemount," Zick said, wearing a white apron and sitting at a table in her remodeled Dunn Bros. location the week after Suzie's opened. An hour earlier, during the lunch rush, the tables and the sleek lunch counter had been packed with diners, and Zick had been tending the grill.

She says there's no other place like hers in town: A place where you can get a home-style breakfast, meatloaf for lunch, or a burger or hot turkey sandwich for dinner. And she considers the location, in a visible spot just off County Road 42 in the Celtic Crossing strip mall, a huge advantage.

But as any restaurateur can tell you, many more new restaurants sink than swim. What suburban commuter can't remember driving past a new restaurant, intending to stop there some day, and then finding that it's gone before they get the chance? Sometimes the same spot in a strip mall can turn over several times, and nothing seems to stick. A restaurant operator can start out with a deep well of enthusiasm and a great idea for a concept, then wind up disillusioned and broke in 18 months.

Zick, who used to run a Quizno's sandwich franchise near her Suzie's location before it went bust, has been through it before. And she's heard the axiom that 90 percent of independent restaurants fail in the first year. (Research I found suggested that it's closer to 25 percent in the first year, and a cumulative 60 percent by the third -- still long odds, to be sure.) But she's doing it anyway, putting in 18-hour days to help get her labor of love off the ground.

"I think it can work out if somebody does it right," she said. "You must have a good location. You need to be visible, and you need to go where there's demand."

That's what Scott Winer thought he was doing when he opened the upscale Copper Bleu restaurant in Lakeville in 2005. Conventional wisdom -- and market research -- suggested that it was a growing and affluent area, with other major retail developments planned nearby. Seems like a good fit, right?

Two years later, the place was shuttered.

"Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're unlucky," Winer said. "You take a big chance when you go to an emerging market."

Copper Bleu got rave reviews from critics and was popular as a special-occasion restaurant, but Winer said diners in Lakeville weren't as interested in high-end eating as he'd expected, and plans for more development nearby never materialized.

His advice for those who want to make a go of it seems intuitive enough: Good service is the most important quality, followed closely by great food, he said. But it's a trick many restaurants can't pull off.

"People go out to eat because it's a form of entertainment for them," Winer said. "It has to be memorable."

That's what Doron Jensen, owner of Jensen's Supper Club in Eagan and Jensen's Cafe in Burnsville, says matters most: When people come into your restaurant, you treat them right -- because word-of-mouth is everything. And if you can tough it out for two or three years and build a good reputation, you just might make it.

Jensen started his supper club 14 years ago after already having worked in the business for many years. People who try to start restaurants without experience in the industry often have no idea what they're getting into, he said.

"They say the restaurant industry has the lowest bar for entry and the highest bar for success," he said. That is: Anybody with enough capital can start a restaurant, but thriving is exceedingly hard.

Even after 30 years in the business, when Jensen opened the more laid-back Jensen's Cafe in Burnsville five years ago, "it was still difficult to do and do well," he said.

Back in Rosemount, Zick is confident that she'll be one of the ones who make it. She's been working in the industry for years, even before her Quizno's, and she says she knows what it takes -- and has the fortitude to stick it out.

"This is really what I wanted to do," she said. "I want to serve people. I love people."

Dylan Belden, editor of Star Tribune South Extra, writes a biweekly column. E-mail him at dylan.belden@startribune .com.