CAFE OLÉ MAKES 5
New owner is returning Cooper-Young pioneer to its Mexican roots
Sandy Robertson acquires her fifth restaurant, Cafe Olé, the Mexican eatery in the Cooper-Young neighborhood.
Sandy Robertson recently acquired her fifth restaurant, a move that should add her name to the list of Memphis restaurant owners whose networks reach into many neighborhoods.
That roster would include Jimmy Ishii of the Sekisui and related restaurants, the Boggs family that owns multiple Huey’s establishments, and Karen Carrier of Mollie Fontaine Lounge, Beauty Shop, Do and Another Roadside Attraction catering.
Robertson’s Mid-America Restaurants Inc. purchased Cafe Olé in August. She also owns Alfred’s on Beale; Dyer’s Burgers, also on Beale Street; Ubee’s on Highland near the University of Memphis; Automatic Slim’s on South Second; and Catering for U.
Cafe Olé has stood at the southwest corner of Cooper and Young since early in 1991, making it a pioneer as far as that neighborhood, now packed with restaurants, goes. Remember when it opened, the long lines, the great reviews, the interior devised by John Griffin, the favored restaurant designer of the time, the noise, the fun?
“It’s a restaurant that lost its way,” said Robertson, sitting on the sun-dappled patio on the west side of the building between Cafe Olé and Young Avenue Deli. “The first thing we did was take the hamburger and chicken wings off the menu. You can go lots of places to get hamburgers and chicken wings. We’re taking Cafe Olé back to its Mexican origins.”
“Cafe Olé needed a shot of energy,” said Stephen B. Crump, who has owned the building the restaurant occupies since the 1970s. “I think the competition got so tough in the last few years, with all the chef-owned restaurants in CooperYoung, that Cafe Olé couldn’t keep up. Sandy has the enthusiasm and the experience and the sense of detail to make the changes it needs.”
Robertson tends to bide her time when she wants something.
“We’ve had our eye on this place for years,” she said. “This is a great corner with tremendous possibilities.”
She bided her time, too, before buying Automatic Slim’s, Karen Carrier’s former flagship restaurant, in 2008, a move that, Robertson admits, surprised many observers in the local dining community.
“I love Karen,” said Robertson, “she’s creative and hardworking, but she had reasons that she needed to move on. We had been looking at that little strip of Second” — across from The Peabody’s side door — “for a long time. If you wait long enough, something will happen.”
Robertson’s career in the restaurant business is shadowed by two losses. Her husband, John Robertson, who founded Alfred’s on Beale in 1986, died in 2003; her business partner, Jay Uiberall, died in 2010 after a fall at home at Pickwick Lake, at the age of 37. Those losses make her doubly glad, then, that her sons work for her. Kris, 27, is at Cafe Olé; Kendall, 30, manages Slim’s and Ubee’s.
“They had choices,” Robertson said of her sons, “but being that Johnny died and Jay, that may have influenced them, I don’t know. But they’ve known the restaurant business all their lives.”
Robertson confesses that she’s not a cook — “when I say I’m going in the kitchen, my sons say, ‘Please, don’t,’ ” — and that her merits lie in management and bookkeeping, skills she developed over 30 years working for Kenny Floor Covering Inc., a local business that specializes in commercial floor materials and in which she still owns an interest.
It doesn’t take more than a few minutes talking with Robertson to understand that she is a person for whom doing things right is a passion. For example, “We do the inventory for every restaurant on Sunday night, without fail. You do that on Sunday, and Monday morning you know exactly what you have, what’s missing, what’s gone astray, what’s needed.”
People who don’t keep an eye on the bottom line not only get into trouble, but they also can’t be flexible when flexibility is required.
“The cost of potatoes and shrimp has gone up,” Robertson said, “but you can’t change the prices on your menu every day. You have to make adjustments other ways, say in paper products and other nonfood items. You have to be very organized and structure your management week and stick to the schedule.”
The complete conversion and remodeling of Cafe Olé should take six months, said Robertson, but already changes have been effected that people will notice.
“Yes, we’ve made menu changes, but we’ve also upgraded the quality of the alcohol. We cleaned the place. We’ve talked about service and instituted new procedures. Before, they were using plastic drinking containers, you know, those red ones, so we bought new glassware. Dinnerware will come soon.”
Major renovations will include taking out part of a wall to connect the restaurant’s two rooms, removing the bar and back-bar and constructing them anew, and refurbishing the patio. A new logo and a stainless steel back-lit sign have been designed and will be installed soon.
Robertson is well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of buying an existing restaurant.
“First,” she said, “you may have to overcome a bad reputation. You have to work at that with good food and good service. You come into a restaurant where all the equipment exists, you don’t have the expense of buying all that, but it’s used, and you don’t know if it’s going to break down or need repairs. You have servers that need to be retrained. Some of these kids have worked here a long time. We come in and we’re the unknowns. Everybody is a little stressed.”
Robertson described the restaurant business as having “good moments and bad. It’s really fun because you work with young people and they keep you young. They’re up with the latest technology and fashions, you sit back and watch them and listen. On the other hand, you work crazy hours seven days a week. You don’t know if you walk in at 11 a.m. if you might get a busload of 40 teenagers, or 30 minutes later it’s bike night or there’s a concert in the park.
“Everything changes constantly, and you certainly aren’t going to get bored, but you can’t, you can never let your guard down.”
Asked if f ive restaurants is enough of a dining empire, Robertson, who is tall, slender and animated and old enough, she remarked, to have an AARP card, said, “Ask me in six months when we get Cafe Olé running the way I want it. I don’t know, but there are interesting possibilities. I like Midtown, but everything is different from what it was 20 years ago. Then, it was all Downtown and Beale Street. Now there’s south of Beale Street and Cooper-Young, the revived Overton Square, Brookhaven Circle. We just have to see. My philosophy has always been, if things don’t go the way you plan, change your plan.”