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July 1, 2004
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July 1, 2004 |
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Employees to buy Sunrise Cafe
The owner of Sunrise Cafe, Jonathan Brown, plans to sell his restaurant to two employees, Amy Boblitt and Brian Rainey, this week. They celebrated the pending deal with a party at Sunrise for family, friends and regular customers. Boblitt and Rainey planned to introduce an updated menu on Wednesday with a couple of new sandwiches at lunch and more choices at dinner as well as a children’s menu. “We want to expand on what Jonathan has done,” Rainey said in an interview last Friday at Sunrise. Other changes include staying open Monday nights and closing on Tuesdays so Rainey and Boblitt, who have two children, can have a day off together. In recent years, they’ve worked different schedules. Boblitt will work mornings and lunchtimes, making pies, doing prep and serving as hostess. She said she will probably hire a grill cook. Rainey will cook dinners. Both will work on the weekends, Rainey said. They are just the fourth owners the restaurant has had since it opened in 1948 as Dick & Tom’s. Brown, who has owned Sunrise since 1990, said he is happy that he can sell the business to Rainey and Boblitt, who has worked at Sunrise for three years. “I knew they would be responsible for the sake of the community” and would make the business successful, he said. “They’re good people people, good food people and good business people,” Brown said. The sale will mean that Brown, 56, and his wife, Anna Arbor, 61, who has also worked at Sunrise, can retire and concentrate on renovating the Union School House, the historic old school building they own. Arbor plans to spend time with her grandchildren and stepdaughter and work on her art, which includes painting and making artwork out of paper. In addition to working on the school house, Brown plans to purchase a sailboat and see the world. In fact, Brown got serious about selling Sunrise Cafe last October when, he said, he told his friend Roy Eastman that he wanted to obtain an “ocean-going sailboat.” Eastman replied that his friend should search the Internet auction site EBay for a boat, Brown recalled, and showed Brown how to do it on Eastman’s computer. Scrolling through the list of offerings, Brown spotted a boat for a reasonable price. He placed a bid, and, much to his surprise, won. The sale later fell through, but that didn’t stop Brown from deciding that he wanted to retire and sail around the globe. “I had an itch to see the world,” recalled Brown, who does not have a boat yet. Self-employed since he was 22, Brown said, he’s realized that “you can’t put off forever living your dreams.” Brown purchased Sunrise Cafe in December 1990, and spent the next four months scrubbing and rehabbing the place before opening in April 1991. He said that he wanted the restaurant to look like an “old fashioned American diner,” and at first only served breakfast and lunch. He said he then discovered that people were going out to eat for dinner, so he expanded Sunrise’s hours. Another change was initiated in 1997, when, Brown said, he realized that the diner-style atmosphere didn’t match his customers’ tastes. He closed the Sunrise and from ’97 to ’98 and remodeled the restaurant into its current look. Both Rainey and Boblitt have worked in the food service industry since they were teens. They met in 1997 as high school students while working at Colonial Pizza in Cedarville. “She was always the star employee,” Rainey said. They went to Cedarville High School and the Greene County Career Center, where Rainey studied culinary arts. Boblitt, 24, who has worked at Sunrise for three years, has waited tables and run the grill. Rainey, 23, has worked as a line cook at Young’s Golden Jersey Inn for four years and worked at Sunrise for six months last year. He returned a few weeks ago in preparation for the turnover. They live in Clifton and have two children, Dylan, 3, and Lily, 6 months. Rainey credited his father, Chris Rainey, the athletic director and a math teacher at Yellow Springs High School, with inspiring him to want to be a chef. The older Rainey, Brian said, cooks “crazy stuff,” improvising in a “pour-and-go manner” without using recipes. “It’s a lot of fun to create and it’s fun to get the reaction of customers,” Rainey said, adding that this is “the most rewarding part of the job.” To sell the business to Rainey and Boblitt, Brown proposed an unusual financial arrangement. Instead of paying Brown in one lump sum, Boblitt and Rainey will make monthly payments based on Sunrise’s sales. The deal is a 12-and-a-half-year agreement. Neither party wanted to disclose the selling price. The offer “makes all the sense in the world,” Brown said, because “you want it to work for them, and for us.” Brown credited Chris Kintner, Todd Van Lehn and Bob Fischer, the trustees of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which owns Sunrise’s building, for supporting the deal. “We came up with a lease that was very innovative and helpful,” Brown said. Arbor compared the agreement to a deal she and Brown made nine years ago when they traded houses with Bob and Sue Parker. Rainey said the deal for the restaurant was probably the only way he and Boblitt could have purchased Sunrise. Brown’s offer “made it appealing,” he said. And in 25 or 30 years, Rainey said, he and Boblitt just may strike a similar agreement with someone else. Then, Rainey said, “I’ll see if Jonathan is still sailing.” |
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