Salt shaker | A conversation with Martha Mai Bryon, co-owner, The Salt Exchange
Photo/Jan Holder
Martha Mai Bryon
Founded: June 2009
Employees: 11
Startup costs: $230,000
Projected revenue, year one: $750,000
Projected revenue, year two: $1 million
Contact: 347-5687
245 Commercial St., Portland
www.thesaltexchange.net
Why did you open The Salt Exchange?
We opened The Salt Exchange because we wanted to have a business together, a legacy to pass on to our children, and we decided on a restaurant specifically because we both have a huge love of food and Charlie, my husband, spent quite a bit of time out in California working in the food and wine industry so it’s something he knows a lot about and that he loves and appreciates. And for me, I’ve always been very much into community action and volunteerism, so this is kind of an opportunity to get into some of those areas as well and do what we both wanted to do.
How do you market your business?
We are with a marketing firm in Portland: Tugboat Creative. Their ads and ad placement have been amazing — one of the first ads that we did was the bourbon tasting we had two weeks ago. They put the ad in The Bollard ... and also suggested that we do an invite on Facebook and within a couple of days we were up to about 30 attendees and people are still asking us when we’re going to do more. It was the largest tasting we’ve ever had.
How did you finance this business?
Through personal savings.
What’s been your biggest overhead cost and how have you managed it?
The build-out, and that was something that we miscalculated to a degree. There were some things that were way more than we expected and some things that were way less than we expected. We did do preliminary research on other restaurants that had built out to find out what those costs would be, but things came up that we just couldn’t have predicted.
What’s been the biggest challenge running this business?
The biggest challenge is twofold. Initially, the biggest challenge was the idea of working with someone I know as intimately as my husband. Eventually we realized that having different points of view is actually a really great thing in this particular industry because we’re able to cater to different kinds of people. We worked it out so that he makes all the end decisions and if we clash on anything we can usually come up with several different answers that work as a solution.
The second most difficult thing about running this particular kind of business is finding the right people to work for you, people that you can trust, people that know what they’re doing and that have learning capacity so that they can continue to educate themselves and be the best they can be. We’ve been really hardcore about checking references and staging people so we can test them out a few times before we use them. It’s been a learning process.
What advice would you share with someone starting a similar venture?
I would say do your research and don’t just do it with businesses that are in your industry — run the whole gamut when you’re looking at numbers and possibilities. Also, don’t just throw your trust into the air with everyone, make sure you really know the people you’re dealing with or have several great references for. I’d also say don’t give up at your first sign of discouragement, we almost gave up five or six times and we just kept plugging away and I’m really glad that we did. The other thing is don’t open up a business in a saturated market — we had six restaurants open when we did. Luckily we’re one of the ones that have survived, but I would be very wary about what kind of market you’re going into.
How has the economy affected your business and business strategy?
We opened in a bad economy, so we had a plan for that. Our dishes are a little more expensive but we offset that by doing a lounge menu and doing $5 wine nights, a business express lunch, $2.50 drafts when it’s snowing, and things that are more affordable. As we see the economy mending itself, we don’t want to lose the audience that we’ve captured so far, so we’re still maintaining some of those opportunities, but we’re also adapting the menu to people who are more willing to go out and spend a little bit more for high quality food. We opened up wanting to be a destination restaurant but because of the economy we knew that wasn’t going to happen, so it’s evolving.
Interview by Mercedes Grandin
New Ventures profiles young businesses, 6-18 months old. Send your suggestion and contact information to editorial @mainebiz.biz.
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