Design & Build the World’s Highest Volume Ski Area Restaurant in 120 Days

In the early 70’s, my wife Suzanne and I found ourselves in Vail, Colorado, with no job, no money, and not much direction.  We’d lived in town for a year or so while I kicked around in the construction business.  A friend of a friend from San Francisco was living in our spare bedroom while he recovered from a divorce, and between myself, Suzanne, and Charley, it was down to paying rent or eating.

Spring and construction season were still a couple of months away, so Suzanne took a job as a chili server/cashier at Eagles Nest, the mountain TOP restaurant.   After a couple of days, the self-important manager walked by and pinched her butt.  Suzi nailed him with a wicked right cross, which landed her in the office of Paul, the head of Vail Food Services.

At the end of their “interview,” Paul asked Suzanne if she’d like to work for him as his Executive Assistant.  Paul was right out of U.S. Army Restaurant Management, and most of his staff were older and had been there a while. She accepted the job.

 Charley was a professional menu designer, and knew a lot about restaurants, so he and I often dropped by Food Service just to see what was going on.  During one of our visits, the Austrian Executive Chef came storming out of Paul’s office screaming “All your restaurants are SHIT … and all your food is SHIT too!!”   We were stunned.

I think it was Charley who ventured, “Yea, well, Vail’s mountain restaurants could use some help.”  Paul looked directly at us and said, “Why don’t you two make us a proposal. The Executive Committee meets Tuesday at 10 AM.” 

This was on a Friday afternoon, so we told Paul we might need Suzi to help us on Monday with our proposal, and we all left the office.

As we drove home in my faithful Shelby GT- 350 (Supercharged), we alternately laughed and cried at our good and bad luck.  I was used to making Industrial Design presentations with my Nikon camera and Kodak slide projector, and Charley had pitched plenty of restaurant menu ideas, so we decided to visit as many ski areas as we could to make a killer slide show on ski area food service, being careful not to include Vail since there was nothing good to say.

We had NO IDEA if that would work, but it was all we could come up with.

We rounded up all of the cash and credit cards we could find, called some friends in Utah we could stay with, and set off to do three ski areas in Colorado on Saturday, three areas in Utah on Sunday, be back at the 1 Hour film developer in Denver on Monday morning, then relax in Vail while we put together our “pitch” in the afternoon.

As Charley and I stood before the Vail execs on Tuesday, we realized they knew almost nothing about their own restaurants, food service in general, or HAD EVEN VISITED THEIR COMPETITION.  They were awe struck … and so were we.

As we left the Exec. Conference room, Paul’s boss Jim, who was also new on the job, asked if we could “Do  Something” with their main restaurant at Mid Vail.  The opening day for ski season was just 120 days away.  No budget, no direction, no nuthin …  just do It.

Paul was a huge help.  Due to the short fuse, decisions were made in minutes instead of weeks.  The previous Mid Vail menu had featured Baron of Beef and tossed salad, all served on paper plates with plastic knives & forks…so we had a good idea of “What not to do.” 

“Fast Food” (i.e. burgers) seemed like a good menu choice, mostly due to the anticipated high volume and limited cooking space. Charley and I jumped back into the Shelby and spent a couple of days in Denver with clipboards and stopwatches learning how the pros did it, or did not do it.

LESSON NUMBER ONE:  It seems obvious that in a high-volume specialized restaurant the menu should drive the design of the facility.  That wasn’t always evident.  Sometimes when we looked behind the counter, employees were bumping into each other, but in our case the facility was going to drive the menu, not the reverse.

LESSON NUMBER TWO:  Remember who you are and what you stand for.  McDonald’s was experimenting with candlelight dining after 8 PM, with waiter service.  They obviously fell flat on their corporate asses, but other fast food chains were trying similar dumb stuff, like Baron of Beef!

LESSON NUMBER THREE:  The fewer menu items you offer the more MONEY you make. If you have one item, it’s (1) going to be available, or (2) going to be out of stock, or (3) turned rotten because someone didn’t rotate the inventory. You have one winner with two losers.

Now, consider if you have two items, there are two winning choices and four losers. Imagine you have 10 or 20 or even 30 items: not good odds.  Especially if your suppliers are 100 miles away in Denver, thru two eleven-thousand-foot passes and a raging blizzard.

We hired all our ski bum/New Age/hippie friends, most of whom had at least one college degree.  They were surprisingly capable and surprisingly motivated.  In addition to the kitchen and seating area, we redid both of the public restrooms, the staircases, the gift shop; and changed the color scheme from black & blue (???) to a warm orange and yellow. Using a subcontractor, we replaced the cheap residential floor covering with commercial grade waterproof carpet … no more musty smell !

Paul and our ersatz crew designed and built the kitchen like a straight through racing engine.  It started with several hundred cubic feet of refrigerated storage, followed by several linear feet of prep, followed by the two biggest char grills we could find, about 30 square feet of cooking area that sizzled, roared, and threw flames (loved that). They fed three stainless “order up” shelves, which were accessed by three order takers/cashiers who never moved more than a few steps in any direction all day long.

When it was all finished we offered the best ¼ pound burgers/cheeseburgers anywhere, fries, Coke products (large only), chili, coffee, draft beer, bottled wine, and hot chocolate.  THAT’S IT. No dogs, no salads, no quiche.  Now Get Outa My WAY!

Our full race kitchen ran just OK at idle, sputtered some at part throttle, but at FULL THROTTLE it was the Dragster, F–1, & Indy Car of ski area food service.

I took my trusty 8 mm film camera on the last day of skiing (locals only) on Easter 1975.  What an adventure!

After the season wrapped up Paul informed us that the Mid Vail Restaurant was the HIGHEST DOLLAR VOLUME SKI AREA RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD.

Pretty cool for a dozen or so guys, and a few gals–thank you–who hadn’t a clue what they were doing.  Vail now controls the ski world, owning more than 80 resorts.  Their seasonal EPIC PASS lets you ski Europe, Japan, and Australia, with the US and Canada for one price.  Their Big Risk/Big Reward style and Believe in Yourself management has taken them to the top.