Opinion - Columns - Kathe Tanner

Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Intrepid entrepreneurs

Tasting room and two restaurants open

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It’s a brave person who opens a business during the worst national recession since the Great Depression.

Start-up money’s hard to find these days, and most customers have less (or no) spare cash in their pockets. Still, All-American optimism is alive and, if not well, at least still sticking its capitalistic nose into the tent.

Such is the case in Cambria, where several families have launched their enterprises.

And whether they succeed, as always, essentially is up to us.

Tourists may pad the bottom line, but entrepreneurs whose businesses have lasted for years here will tell you that a firm’s long-term survival on the North Coast depends less on the tourist who buys a sweet roll, knick-knack or a rubber ducky in August than it does on the local who comes in for coffee three times a week in February and regularly buys his milk, Spackle, petunias and toothbrushes in Cambria.

We share that experience-speaking advice with the newcomers, who are:

• Our colleague at The Tribune, Terri Banish, and her winemaker husband Tom Banish have opened Black Hand Cellars, a boutique tasting room at 766 Main St. Suite B, in West Village. They offer such red-wine varietals as four-year verticals of syrah, cuvee’ blends, Rhone and Bordeaux blends and dessert wine.

• Zanzara Landrum and her family have opened The Brambles at 4005 Burton Drive, with an emphasis on fresh food and local history.

Both should do well here, especially given their longtime business ties to this county; and

• Allen and Mi Sun Fang, formerly of Jackson Hole, Wyo., opened their Dragon Bistro in late June. It’s in the Center Street building which, decades ago, was moved one block down from Burton Drive to the corner of West Street, to house Ian’s restaurant.

Cambria has an all-Chinese-food restaurant again, and if local support is an indicator, they already appear to have found and quickly filled a gaping hole in local supply.

Listening to customer buzz inside on several occasions, I’d say the locals are glad to have it. “I can have moo shu without going out of town!” said one elated Cambria patron. “Egg foo yung … I’m in heaven,” said another.

During our visits, we observed a lot of good-natured, meal-related chatting from one table to the next, and incoming patrons quizzed those who already had begun their meals. From firefighters to other restaurateurs, from former directors on the Cambria Community Services District to service-club hierarchy, from stay-at-homes to eternally busy volunteers, the questions were the same: “What did you have? How was it?”

But here’s the rub: If you and I and our friends are glad to have the Bistro — or The Brambles or Terri’s tasting room — then we have to support them.

And it’s not enough to patronize them once every six months or a year, folks. There simply aren’t enough of us on the North Coast.

Think weekly.

Which takes me to a Web site mentioned recently by a friend, www.the350project.net.

The site asks “What three independently owned businesses would you miss if they disappeared? Stop in. Say hello. Pick up something that brings a smile. Your purchases are what keep those businesses around.”

The project’s premise continues: “If half the employed population spent $50 each month in locally owned independent businesses, it would generate more than $42.6 billion in revenue,” according to employments from the U.S. Department of Labor in February 2009.

The Web site’s conclusion is, “For every $100 spent in locally owned, independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures. If you spend that in (a local branch of) a national chain, only $43 stays here.

“Spend it online, and nothing comes home,” unless that Web site is for a local store.

These are tough times for established businesses. It’s really scary out there for new ones.

So, if you like what you see and you want the shop or restaurant to stay in business, you have to patronize it … as regularly as your pocketbook will allow.

That’s our job, folks, each and every one of us. Isn’t it nice that our “work” is so pleasant?

E-mail Kathe Tanner at ktanner@thetribunenews.com. Read more “Slices” at thecambrian.com.