The Valley Inn

In the fall of 2003, my ex-wife Lisa and I were out enjoying one of the last rides of the season. Somehow we ended up in Elroy, WI which neither of us had ever really been to before, even though it was close by. Sure, we had passed through it on the way to other places, but neither of us had specifically been in Elroy to be in Elroy.

Little did we know that Elroy would become a huge part of our lives for the next ten years.

It would also become the center piece for one of the greatest experiences and most heartbreaking moments of our lives.

We're riding and we come across the restaurant you see in the picture above.

I'm a restaurant guy. I love them. I particularly love old restaurants.

They have style, personality, life.

New restaurants are buildings that serve food. Old restaurants have character and stories to tell.

We stop.

We see a sign in the door saying "we are closed, thank you for your business".

Damn. No lunch.

But I have to check out the building.

I'm looking at the construction and guessing 50's. Look in the windows and see a cool little stage in the bar, velvet wallpaper in the main dining room, all kinds of cool stuff. I found out later that my Dad used to play on that little stage in his younger days and he also saw guitar legend Merle Travis perform there.

Too bad they were closed. Would have loved to go inside.

Then I see the "For Sale" sign in a corner window of the dining room.

"VIP Realty. Peg Kohnhorst-Realtor"

For some reason the agency and the realtors name stuck in my head.

We left and rode back home. End of story.

Except somehow we ended up going back to look at it again.

In wandering around the building we discovered the backdoor was open. And we went in.

And I fell in love.

The kitchen was dirty, downright nasty from how it was left. But it was the most exquisite design! OMG! Everything was in the perfect place, right where you needed it to be. This would be the smoothest operating kitchen on the planet! Whoever designed this kitchen loved cooking for people. It was perfect.

The rest of the building was the same: perfectly designed for it's purpose. It was obviously not taken care of, but was a gem in it's time and could be again.

There was also a motel attached to the property. It was open too so we took the liberty of going in and looking around.

Here's a dream nobody knows: In becoming a chef and wanting to have a place, the place in my head is like a Colonial/Victorian building, white, with a motel directly connected. Like a lodge type thing. Maybe in Vermont or something. Nice hotel with an awesome restaurant, although I really don't think I have a lot of interest in the motel business.

This motel was not nice.

It actually scared me. Another story here someday will detail my fear of boiler rooms. For now, I walked down to the basement of this motel and got the heebie-jeebies so bad I RAN back up the stairs. There was a boiler. It was scary.

So we leave again and we talk.

We were going to try to buy this place. It would be impossible because we were broke and both of us had bad credit and a zillion other things, but we believed we could do it anyway.

We called Peg from VIP Realty.

We talked to her on the phone and set up an appointment to see the place, even though we had already been in.

By the time we were scheduled to meet, Lisa and I already had a complete concept, menu and general idea.

We met with Peg and took a tour.

Found out the price was $350,000 for the restaurant and motel. OUCH! Of course we acted all non-chalant like $350K was pocket change or something.

We told Peg what we wanted to do with the place, restoring it to it's former grandeur and making it a place people wanted to go. We told her our idea's, showed her our menu and told her about our financial situation.

A few days after this Peg called and wanted us to meet her at the restaurant again. She wanted us to talk to the owner.

We went and met Svetlana. Or just Lana for short.

A very short little Serbian woman with a very thick accent. And a bright personality.

So we talked and Peg had us tell Lana our idea's and show her our stuff. She told us how she and her husband who had passed bought the restaurant for their sons because it was their dream. But the sons had issues and ran the place into the ground before going to prison for some crimes they committed while owning a dream restaurant that was GIVEN to them by their parents.

Our idea's were in line with what Lana had wanted for the restaurant when she bought it for her children.

Because she liked us and our ideas and ambition, to help with our poor financial situation, she agreed to sell it to us on a Land Contract with her so we didn't need to worry about money for the property. We could pay her directly.

Lisa and I went to work at getting the backing we needed to do it. We needed to be able to buy food and pay employees.

We borrowed a Business Planning software from Lisa's cousin, (which I STILL have all these year's later), and put together a great Business Plan for the Valley Inn.

Because the place had a bad reputation a name change was necessary, but we wanted to keep it as close to what it was originally as we could. So we decided we'd call it the "Pleasant Valley Inn". Not to get too far ahead, but we later found that name was already sort of used in the area and I decided to go with "The Blackstone" instead. I loved Harry Blackstone and I loved the Blackstone law books when I was studying to become a paralegal.

The plan went out to  I have no idea how many banks and financial institutions around the country.

Any place we could find that could or would finance a restaurant got a package.

And we got a lot of phone calls, emails, and letters in the mailbox.

They were all the same: "This is absolutely the best business plan we have ever seen. It's brilliant. But we're sorry to inform you that we won't be able to help with your financial needs".

So we tried harder.

Lana tried to. She went all the way down to $100K for the property and we wouldn't have to make a land contract payment until we were making a profit. Peg tried too.

The city of Elroy has a program where they borrow money to people who start a business within the community. It's a grant and you pay it back later after you get started.

So we figured we'd try that. If we could get that grant, we'd be in business.

So we applied, we sent our business plan and a letter.

We were scheduled for a City Council meeting.

We went and were called before the board on our application.

We were grilled to death about why they should believe in us, how was it that we could make this failure of a restaurant successful and on and on.

And we talked to them, openly honestly. We were up front about the condition of the place, it's terrible reputation and how we could turn it around.

One board member, Don Luth was the WORST! We almost felt like he was physically beating us up.

When we finished the board went into closed session and sent everybody outside. In the cold.

When they reconvened, we walked into a room of smiling faces and teary eyes.

Except for gruff assed Don Luth.

Don who intimidated us again for a minute and then told us that they would award us $45,000 dollars for our dream as long as we could get another bank or organization to match it.

I sh*t you not.

We pulled it off!

There was an article in the paper about it and everything.

---

Even with that and "the worlds greatest business plan" it was not to be.

Nobody would help us. We were out of options.

And the dream faded to black and the restaurant sat empty even longer.

Until somebody bought the Valley Inn.

I had to stop and talk to the person who bought it. I wanted to make sure they were going to do the right thing with my baby.

Not only did Lisa and I try to buy it, we also prepared as if it were ours. We were there day and night fixing things and cleaning and doing all of the advance work so that if the financing came through we could open immediately. Yeah, the Valley Inn was our baby and someone bought it.

The guy, Dennis, I kind of didn't like right away. He just seemed like a guy who bought the Valley Inn so he could have a bar. Not because of it's potential as a restaurant.

So to still try to save it, I told him our story and also volunteered to work there. I could still preserve it if I were the chef.

Nothing happened.

He opened and wasn't doing well and called me in when it was already too late.

One night of cooking there and just making new stuff out of what was available in the walk in and he offered to make me a part owner. If of course I invested $5K to help pay for the food we would need since he was already broke.

I walked away and didn't look back.

The Valley Inn closed again.

I drove by one day and saw that the door was smashed.

I stopped and went in.

The place was trashed. Everything was busted, someone sprayed a fire extinguisher all over the bar, broke out the windows in the banquet room, just destroyed the place.

Lisa and I went back to work. Day and night cleaning and fixing. We're probably the only trespasser's whoever did such a thing.

While we were fixing and cleaning the dream rekindled.

We were back at it.

Dennis had done so much damage to the name that "Pleasant Valley Inn" wouldn't be enough to fix it, so we came up with a new name, a new concept and a new business plan.

We designed a logo, a menu, a cookbook with all of our recipes, an employee handbook, EVERYTHING. At any moment we could have opened the doors and been ready to go.

I found one of my Chef Instructors from school and got him to come over from Oshkosh and check the place out and our ideas. He was impressed and was sure we would be successful.

I also got incredible joy in that meeting because Loras, the guy who taught me everything I know about the restaurant business and cooking wanted copies of recipes that I had created for what would have been "The Blackstone".

---

I designed that.

I had big idea's, as my Dad would say.

And we went back to trying to make it happen, and again, we could not get the funding we needed and this time the dream died.

And turned me into a broken man.

I wasn't the same after that.

I quit dreaming. I quit living.

I became a miserable man who was merely existing.

I was a terrible Dad, a very poor husband and just a grumpy person in general and made everybody around me miserable.

Shortly after this started the part of our lives when Lisa and I never did anything and no longer had any friends to do anything with. Nobody wanted to be around me.

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I eventually got over this, I'm happy and I'm dreaming again.

But that failure on my part cost a lot. And ended up causing a lot of pain to a lot of people.

But that is all healing too.

I do not regret the experience because like a lot of other things, it's a part of who I am and where I am today.

The biggest lesson learned was to never quit dreaming.

The Valley Inn was purchased again a few years back and remains open. However it sucks. The food is terrible and no one cares. Basically the guy who bought it owns other businesses and uses the Valley Inn to write off losses. He has another restaurant in Reedsburg that he cares about that is very good.

He remodeled the Valley Inn and it's no longer the same. It's now a new restaurant in an old building.

I still have everything we created. Every file, every recipe, every cost sheet. With the exception of adjusting food prices to what they are today, this thing could open and be successful just like back then. It was that well thought out.

I just looked at the menu again. When I got to the last page I cried. It still hurts that much.

Go ahead and take a look. I think you'd have liked the place.

---

The Blackstone Menu
File Size:	567 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

---