Local haunt | A conversation with Jeremy Saxton, co-owner of bacari, a bistro in Brunswick
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Jeremy Saxton, co-owner of bacari, a bistro in Brunswick
Founded: January 2008
Employees: Six
Startup costs: $100,000
Revenue, year one: $280,000
Projected revenue, year two: $320,000
Contact: 725-2600
212 Maine St., Brunswick
www.bacaribistro.com
What type of restaurant do you run?
We focus on small plates and we have a full bar. We try to do some specialty cocktails as well with it. [We serve] just dinner. [Bacari is] Italian for small plates, a wine bar.
Why did you launch this kind of business?
I grew up in the restaurant business. My family owns Dolphin Restaurant and Marina in Harpswell and they’ve been open I think since ‘67 or something. So I grew up right there, right on the water, and was always doing something down there when I was a kid. And then I decided to take over a lease down in Cundy’s Harbor, which is the other side of Harpswell, called Holbrook’s Wharf and Snack Bar and I ran that for three years.
My wife and I were going out quite a bit in the Brunswick, Portland area and I always thought — I don’t like to have full-on dinners, I like to have kind of like appetizers and such — and I thought, hey, what a great idea. What if people could come in and not spend a bunch of money and just try different things and kind of do a small-plate style?
Why did you decide to open in Brunswick? Why not in Harpswell?
[It’s] year-round. Harpswell is pretty dead in the wintertime. There’s not much going on. My grandmother owned a printing shop where we are right now, she was in business for over 20-something years, and the timing of it kind of worked out. We had been looking in a couple other spots in Brunswick and I wanted to get close to the Maine State Music Theater and Bowdoin College. 212 Maine St. is kind of like upper Maine Street, and it’s just like 300 feet from the college and from the theater and so we have a lot of foot traffic from the streets off of upper Maine Street that come here.
So what’s been your biggest challenge in the first year?
I would say one of them is definitely trying to stick to the vision that we had created. What did we want? What kind of atmosphere? And trying to just keep it as simple as possible at the same time. Sometimes you just kind of veer away from that and you just have to stop and really think of, you know, why are we opening this business and just kind stick to your guns a little bit.
Why did you veer away from your original plan for simplicity?
You know, you get kind of caught up as you go through these seasons. We opened in the winter, we built a really great local clientele in the Brunswick, Harpswell area, [the] Topsham area. [Then] we had changed our menu in May and were going to have more theater crowds. And so we had kind of taken away the small plates and didn’t have as many.
And why was it important to you to return to your original small-plate plan?
When we opened up last year people absolutely loved the place. They got a feel of really what bacari was and, you know, those are the people that support us. We have people that come in here weekly, bi-weekly and you need to make sure that they’re giving you support and they’re kind of marketing for you. [That] they’re telling their friends, “You’ve got to come to this place, it’s a great little spot.” You have a job to do, which is to keep bringing them back and make sure you’re doing the same thing you did two months ago or six months ago. And I think if you don’t do that, you’ll start losing some of you core clientele.
How do you market the restaurant?
Well, we’ve done really bare-minimum of advertising. When we first opened up we sent an email out to friends and family, and then it was kind of word-of-mouth. We try to concentrate on just repeat business. If we can have people keep coming back here, they’re going to do the advertising for us. You need to focus on whoever comes in this door. Make sure they have a great time. Your goal is to keep having them come back.
Interview by Sara Donnelly
New Ventures profiles young businesses, 6-18 months old. Send your suggestions and contact information to editorial@mainebiz.biz.
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