November 15, 2007 Issue

Restaurants, to many people, may appear to be strange, unruly, difficult businesses to operate. While they may have different working parts than say, an insurance office, they aren’t really that complicated.

A restaurant has to have sales, like any other business. It also has costs, and in the managing of those costs usually hangs the success or failure of the restaurant. There are primarily four expense areas of that restaurants must manage. These are food, liquor, labor, and rent or mortgage costs.

There you have it. But before you race off and open up your dream restaurant, I’ll let you in on an industry secret. There’s a little more to it than that. There’s a lot more to it if you want to open a great restaurant. And that is something I know about. Because Harbor Docks in Destin is a great restaurant. And that is because it is much more than just a restaurant.

In addition to managing costs a restaurant needs to have good food, service, location and atmosphere. In addition to all of the standard operating aspects of a restaurant, there are other things required to make a restaurant special. Those other things are what Harbor Docks specializes in.

During the month of November, none of our costs are in line at Harbor Docks. Primarily, this is because our sales are down. In terms of business, it is the slowest month of the year. But because of two events we host, it is our best month as a restaurant.

The first Sunday of every November we take children fishing. Lots of them. This year we sent 390 kids fishing on 50 of Destin’s finest charter boats. Every child was fed breakfast, sent fishing, treated to an old-fashioned fish fry, given T-shirts, hats, rods and reels, and basketballs. It is the best thing that we do.

There are “Take a Kid Fishing Days” in other places I’m sure. But I can promise you, none of them take 390 children deep-sea fishing. And I can’t believe there are more appreciative children anywhere. We’ve been taking kids fishing for 13 years.

Tommy Norred and I stood on our dock with six children and a chaperone long after the rest of the boats had left, filled with excited, first-time fishermen. The boat assigned to take those six kids didn’t make it. Kevin Moak and the crew of the Mollie had already been fishing for an hour, but they turned around and picked up the last six children. The kids we waited with had to be disappointed. They had seen almost 400 children already leave the docks. But in the entire time we waited for the Mollie to come pick them up, there were no complaints, no cross words, no anger. The kids were patient.

I mentioned this later to my mother. I told her how unusual it was to see six youngsters, in those disappointing conditions, being so well behaved.

“These children that are here today are used to being patient,” she said. “They’re used to being disappointed. They have been waiting for things all their lives.”

Todd Gatlin, the ex-Florida Gator linebacker, and long time leader of the Okaloosa Boys and Girls Club told me about driving 70 children on his bus that morning. “You can’t imagine how excited my kids are just on the bus ride,” he said. “Most of them have never seen the Destin Bridge.”

The next best thing we do at Harbor Docks will take place next Thursday, Thanksgiving. This will be the 13th year we have hosted a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all of the proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity. Every year we raise enough money to build one-half of a house. You can do the math. Millard Fuller, the visionary who founded Habitat for Humanity will be here again this year. That’s quite an honor.

We will feed more than 1000 people this Thanksgiving. Some of them are homeless and some of them live in mansions. It’s nice to occasionally see everyone gathered together. The folks we will feed this year share one thing in common with the kids we take fishing. They are thankful. They are thankful for different things perhaps, but thankful nonetheless.

It has been a good year for Harbor Docks. We entertained and fed lots of people. We progressed as a company and we grew as individuals. We opened another restaurant. We had fun. We caught fish. We dodged hurricanes. We made a profit. For that, we are thankful.

Harbor Docks does what successful restaurants do. We watch our food and liquor costs. We keep labor costs in line. We try to take care of our customers and our employees. But what we do best has little to do with the standard restaurant benchmarks. What we do best occurs during the slowest month of the year.

What we do best happens every year during the month of November.

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