The sign on the door read “Closed for Baby, back Wednesday,” and even though Creed Seitz wasn’t born for another two weeks, College Drive Café reopened right on time.
Aaron Seitz and his 4-year-old son, Ryder, drove every week to see his wife Leah Evers in an Albuquerque hospital while they waited for the baby to be born and when he arrived two months early. For almost three months, Aaron would return to the cafe he owns with his wife, cook Wednesday through Sunday and make the 3½-hour drive once again.
“It was the first time we were apart in 10 years,” Aaron says, cooing at Creed, dressed in an aqua onesie and happily tucked in his mother’s lap. “It was difficult.”
Such is the life of business partners who are also partners in love.
Many local couples own restaurants together and share the daily load of making both a business and a home work. They hand off babies to whichever parent is not working, take separate vacations and different days off and still never have enough time together.
Finding balance in business and in love is harder than keeping a souffle afloat.
“We talked about work all the time. There was no ‘What did you do today, dear?’ We knew what we did,” says Susan Devereaux, co-owner of Guido’s Favorite Foods with her husband, Sean. “There was nothing else.”
Finally, after years of Sean running the business and Susan running the kitchen and being on call 24/7 because they lived above the restaurant, the two needed a change.
They moved to a spacious home in Bayfield, far enough away to require staff members to manage daily crises on their own. Sean returned to a job in the gas and oil industry and now spends less time at the restaurant. They brought in their daughter, Amber Jacin, as the general manager, who will often greet you by name from behind the bar or deliver your meal. This day, she’s setting up tables for lunch service as her mother squeezes in a few minutes to talk to me.
“I’m very happy,” Susan says. “I have a garden. Sean is teaching me how to fly-fish. Amber is here. Maybe I’ll take a group to Italy,” she adds, dreaming of the possibilities a less than 60-hour work week with real vacations might hold.
If the hardest part about sharing a restaurant and a home is never having enough time together as a couple, the best part is raising a family and a business together. It allows dad to share child-raising duties and mom to get out of the house.
Tad and Vilma Brown, who together own Fired Up Pizzeria, used to see each other for a few brief minutes when he came home from his job as an outdoor therapist to care for son Connor as she left for her shift as a waitress. When Vilma became pregnant with their second child, they decided to do it differently.
They abandoned their studies in linguistics and social work and opened a wood-fired pizza cart. When a tiny space at 1050 Main Avenue vacated, they moved in, with Tad baking the authentic Napolitan pizzas himself and Vilma serving customers. Today, they work together in a breezy space with a huge kitchen at 741 Main, sharing duties from baking pizzas to busing tables with a mostly college-aged staff.
Now, their schedule is an ever changing mish-mash of taking care of Connor, 6, and Mason, 3, working at the restaurant and managing household tasks. They hold sacrosanct their hour together after delivering the boys to school and preschool and sharing a short hour-and-a-half before dinner as a family, taking a bike ride or reading stories before one leaves for the dinner shift at the restaurant.
“The best part is the time I get to spend with my family, with my wife,” Tad says of owning the restaurant with Vilma.
Even though restaurant couples work together, they may not see each other all day. None of the five couples interviewed shared the same job. If one cooks, the other runs the restaurant. It’s better that way, they all said.
But even longtime restaurant couples say balancing work with the personal is a never-ending struggle. Barbara Helmer and Miguel Carrillo have owned Kennebec Café for years, with her running the restaurant and him managing the kitchen.
“The hardest part is when things are stressful, you can’t always be diplomatic,” she says.
They both work hard, they both respect each other and they both share the goal of making their business a success, Miguel says.
“If something goes wrong with each other, I’m laid back,” he says. “I don’t argue.”
At Chimayo Stone Fired Kitchen, Michael Lufty mans the searing hot ovens in the back while wife Birgitte attends to customers at the front. The two say they think alike, emphasizing organization, attention to detail and striving for perfection.
They tell the story of critiquing restaurants together when they would travel. Michael, a height-challenged Californian, would complain about being unable to get his dinner plate close enough when they dined at a bar. Birgitte, a lengthy Dane, would grumble that she couldn’t fit her knees underneath the bar. They made notes for how to do it right when they opened their own place.
Despite their similar personalities, Michael says, the restaurant they own together “wouldn’t work as well if she was in the kitchen. We’re not side by side for 10 hours a day.”
Chimayo has been open a year and all in all, things are going well, the two say. But the long hours, the stress of a new enterprise and the lack of time together takes its toll. They miss entertaining at home, skiing the fresh powder and traveling together. The closest to a vacation they’ve come is four days off for the wedding of Michael’s son.
Yet all of the couples say they wouldn’t trade the toil and trouble of co-owning a restaurant for their old lives. Leah Evers of College Drive Café says she can’t wait to get back to the friendly harassment of their fun-loving staff. Barbara Helmer and Miguel Carrillo are busily planning a new venture at Kennebec, building either a beautiful chapel to host weddings and events or adding hotel rooms to their scenic property.
Tad and Vilma Brown are doing the opposite, shelving plans to open Fired Up restaurants in other cities. For the first time in their lives, they’re taking a breath, taking weekends off, enjoying the moment, together. For now, that’s enough.
“We went through the hardest times,” Vilma says of their lean years, “and we’re still in love and we have a special business, and we did it together.”
phasterok@durangoherald.com
