Milton’s restaurant was going to close, but its customers had other plans

Fran Weber had decided she couldn’t take running Milton’s Vittles, Vino and Beer anymore.

For the past 13 years, the restaurant gave the suburb of Crystal a chance to taste her late son’s recipes. It had been six years since Chad Freeman died on his 37th birthday, and Weber said the restaurant now needed regular infusions of her cash. In September, she announced that October would be Milton’s last month.

“I just didn’t have it in me,” she said.

But its patrons had other plans. They set up a crowdfunding campaign on Weber’s behalf, giving more than $20,000 — enough to stay open through the end of year. Mostly, their words convinced her to grab the lifeline.

Such lifelines are tethered to restaurants’ increasingly important tool of crowdfunding, which can give customers a chance to keep beloved spots open. And Weber’s change of heart hints at the dilemmas of closing long-established eateries, which can traffic as much in sentimentality as in profit.

“They’ve heard that outpour of love and care and support. I think that’s renewed their passion and desire to keep it open for the community,” said Erica Garcia-Jones, who set up the fundraiser. “But we don’t also want to be selfish.”

Serving up homey classics like pot roast, matzo ball soup and mac and cheese, for some longtime customers, Milton’s has become comfort food in more ways than one. For Garcia-Jones, the soup was the last thing the mother of her fiancé ate before she died. And when her younger brother died in April, she found herself back at Milton’s, if not just to talk with Fran’s daughter, Char Freeman.

Milton’s knows about loss, too. Weber, in part, started it as a family operation — Char, the face, and her son, Chad, the chef. It’s Chad’s recipes that Milton’s serves, even six years after he fell from his bike, later developing a blot clot from which he didn’t survive.

The pandemic kept Weber busy, she said. But then the loss set in. Weber said she began to spend less time at the old family restaurant, and more of the load fell to her daughter.

Weber said she was in a good spot financially, owing to the success of her family’s bowling bar, Park Tavern in St. Louis Park. But Milton’s wasn’t. She’d been thinking of shuttering the place for months, long before she announced it on Facebook.

Then the donations rushed in.

More than 230 people have contributed to Milton’s crowdfunding campaign. Customers were showing up and handing her checks, and the restaurant is filling the approximately 50 seats in its dining room again.

Four hours from home in Sioux Falls, Benjamin Arnold stopped at Milton’s in February. He, too, was mourning a family member’s death. Arnold said that moment of respite was as important as the food. In October, he sent $250 to the fundraiser.

Milton’s is within walking distance of Therese Kiser’s home. Kiser, who sits on Crystal’s City Council, said she comes for the pot roast and kale. The restaurant is among Crystal’s most prized gems, Kiser said, and she couldn’t bear to see it close. She chipped in a “small donation.”

“It’s this cute little, nice decor inside, just tucked into the neighborhood,” Kiser said. “There’s not a lot of restaurants like that as you get out into the suburbs.”

Turning this kind of sentiment into dollars is perhaps a restaurateur’s most important equation. And crowdfunding has become a bigger piece of a restaurant’s calculus, if not a fraught one, said chef John Noble Masi, a professor at Florida International University’s hospitality school.

Restaurants had just a 32% success rate in their crowdfunding goals, according to a study of more than 1,500 campaigns on the platform Kickstarter. Milton’s own fundraiser is woefully short of its $150,000 goal, although Weber said she could do without some of the big-ticket items on her wish list.

“When people place their trust in you with their money — not just their trust, but their money — a responsible business owner has a greater responsibility,” Masi said.

The fundraiser gave Weber a clear look at the community she’s crafted, and she remembered how many people might lose their emotional investment in the place. Still, their financial investment, Weber said, doesn’t put pressure on her relaunch.

She’s treating the spontaneous fundraiser as a Hail Mary, a chance to remake Milton’s rather than using it as a short-term solution to patch the holes. There are regular posts on Milton’s Facebook page, which gives frank updates on where the restaurant stands.

But if there’s one thing that saves Milton’s, Weber said, it’ll be its catering. As companies send workers back into offices, Weber hopes they’ll come to her to cater corporate lunches, or “Vittle Packs.” Hiring a full-time catering manager is at the top of Weber’s wish list. She’d like a food truck to take her meals on the road, too.

Garcia-Jones said she didn’t have any expectations of Weber to keep Milton’s open. If the relaunch doesn’t work, or is too painful, she understands if Milton’s closes.

But for at least two more months, the pot roast and jerk chicken will still emerge from Milton’s kitchen, just the same as they were when Weber’s son was making them.

“Every menu item is so delicious. But that’s all Chad. Those are all his recipes,” Garcia-Jones said. “He’s so very much alive at the restaurant.”