December 26, 2006

Cafe Sales Sharpen Founders' Appetites

In December 2001, a real estate agent asked David Redmond and his wife, Lisa, if they would be interested in taking over a deli in the Cromwell Center, off Cromwell Bridge Road near the Beltway.

At the time, David Redmond was Director of Golf for the Baltimore County Revenue Authority, overseeing the operations of five public golf courses in Woodlawn, White Hall, Cockeysville and Essex. Lisa Redmond had owned a cafe in Towson; then enrolled in nursing courses at the University of Maryland before deciding that wasn't a career she wanted to pursue.

By January 2002, the couple had bought the deli and renamed it Cafe Gourmet. At first, it was for his wife, "just to give her a vocation she enjoyed," David Redmond said. Soon, however, it was successful enough that Lisa Redmond had "beat me in income," he recalled. David Redmond resigned his county position to focus on the restaurant business. Since then, the couple bought or started five more cafes -- in Towson, Philadelphia, Hunt Valley and, most recently, on Charles Street and Water Street in Baltimore -- and named each one Cafe Gourmet.

They are now negotiating for locations in Owings Mills and Jacksonville, and in Abingdon in Harford County, David Redmond said. Despite the growth, the Redmonds' chain might remain about the same size, however. In April 2005, they started to sell some locations. They sold the Cromwell Center location first, then the Hunt Valley location and finally -- in October -- the Towson site, for prices David Redmond declined to disclose. "They were straight-up sales of operating businesses," he said. "It got a little unwieldy. You can grow fairly quickly, and they were difficult to manage for one individual."

In exchange for one-time, $1 payments, the new owners were given the right to use the Cafe Gourmet name, as well as recipes that Lisa Redmond had created, plus menus and operating manuals. Their stores also could remain on the company web site, www.visitcafegourmet.com, if the new owners liked, with no strings attached.

"The name has grown in stature in the area. People recognize it," David Redmond said. He and his wife don't receive licensing or similar fees from the new owners, but most of them still follow the basic model established at Cromwell Center, he said. The new owners "are all smart business people," he said. "It would be foolish for them to change it."

Scott Cholewczynski, of the Cafe Gourmet in the Cromwell Center, is one owner who is sticking with the Redmonds' plan. "If something's working, then why change it?" he asked.

An aspect of Cafe Gourmet that potential owners (and their employees) find appealing are the hours, David Redmond said. Because most customers are office and retail workers, the cafes are open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. Such a schedule "affords staff a quality of life. They get to have weekends and pick up their kids from soccer practice," he said.

Salvatore Serio, the owner of the Cafe Gourmet in Hunt Valley, agreed. "I liked the concept of five-day short hours for business people. It fits my lifestyle," he said.