|
|
Pauli's HOME: "Known for Our Food & Remembered for Our Service"ReservationsDinner MenuGift CertificatesVinotini: Our Tapas LoungePauli's V.I.P. ClubBirthday Passport & NewsletterPolls and SurveysPrivate Parties/FunctionsAnniversary Ideas by YearDirectionsChefs CornerThe HistoryJoin the StaffContact Us/CommentsJust the FAQMom's WorldPauli's Favorite SitesSite Map
|
This rambling of my past to present will be boring to some and enlightening
to others. I am writing it because I have not actually done a resume for myself in 15 years or more. I get a lot of questions
about the journey it took for me to get where I am today. I have never been able to really answer the question but thought
forcing myself to sit down and write this might help me see something. If I do not figure it out at least I'll have it written
down for the whole world to see. I write in my own style, sometimes in first person and sometimes in third person. Please bear with with as I try to get through this as writing was never my best subject.
In the Beginning Early Adult Years
After graduation from high school in 1986, I decide to accept an Academic Scholarship at a small Division 3 College, The College of Wooster, in order to to be able to play football, and start as a freshman. While at Wooster I get a Staff Infections in my left hip and have 5 surgeries. My mom will stay I almost died, I don't know if that's true or not, but I did lay in the hospital and lose almost 50 pounds in 2 1/2 weeks. I decide not to try and get back in the shape needed for football after losing all that weight and start school at Kent State University. At the time Kent State was a "Playboy Top 10 Party School" and I was doing my best to help them keep that reputation. Well needless to say I drank myself out of school. After going to college my step-dad took a job overseas. So now I am up a creek without a paddle,I decide to join the Navy myself. I am sent to San Diego for Boot Camp. After Boot Camp, I am stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, of all places. I have come almost full circle, back to the Tidewater area of Virginia. While in the Navy, I see the world from Peurto Rico to New York City to the Mediterranean Sea. I am way to poor as an E-3 in the Med to enjoy it but I do eat some great food. After my two years service in the Navy, my mom and step-dad had moved back to Huntsville from overseas. I figure this is as good a place as any to start over. GBG, Green Bottle Grill
How I started in this crazy industry Now I need a job. My uncle is managing a night club in the old Plush Horse location. I start as a bouncer, then I move to bar-back. The hours are long but the money is good for having no real education. The club closes. I decided I like the restaurant industry but not the nightclub side of the business. At this point I go to work at Red Lobster as a waiter and get back in college. I soon move to Darryl's Restaurant. After about 1 year, I hear of this new fine dinning restaurant opening, Green Bottle Grill. I am hired as the youngest waiter on a staff of professionals. The concept of the Green Bottle was a first for Huntsville, a fine dinning restaurant in which the menu change every single day. The training was intense and the restaurant took off. After a year or so, I decide the grass must be greener in a larger city. A buddy from my childhood calls saying he has just graduated From Memphis State and needs a roommate. I go and work at several restaurants, Owen Brennen's, Jim's Place East and Ruth's Chris to name a few. My buddy gets engaged and I decide I have had enough of living in Memphis and return to Huntsville. The Green Bottle is fully staffed at this time, so I go looking for some management experience. I get a dining room managers job at the Raddison Hotel on South Parkway. The experience is pretty good but I can not take the hotel business for very long. I hear of a new restaurant opening in Downtown Huntsville called Richard's on the Square. I wanted to go through another opening of a restaurant from the beginning. I learn a lot from going through openings of the Green Bottle Grill and Richard's on the Square, somethings I'll use in the future and others I learn not to do in the future. Richard's struggles after a rough opening night and I am looking for new opportunities. While all this is going on, I have put a business plan together for a future restaurant. I start shopping it around but get no response. I was probably not ready for it at this time, at least that what my mom would say. I go back to school and work at Green Bottle Grill, I was soon made the Head Waiter and trained virtually all front of the house staff. This was an important part of the future, I train the Green Bottle Grill way, again I figure out what I like about their system and what I do not like. I eventually start evolving their system into what I think will work better and it works. "Pauli's" and my Beautiful Daughters are born
In 1997 I get married and get 2 incredible kids out of this life experience, Hannah in 1998 and Meagan in 2000. I decided if I can not get a restaurant open soon I would go back to school and get my engineering degree. I finally get someone to bite on the business plan I had put together, and reworked and reworked and reworked. The company my step-dad's is working for goes public and he gets a little cash. They ask me if I'm ready to open a restaurant. I say "YES." Now it's time to go looking for a location. I have to much respect for Rick Paler and Anne Pollard, the owners of the Green Bottle Grill, to open anywhere near the Green Bottle since they had taught me so much. The location we are currently in comes available January 1st 1998. We strike a deal and we are open on March 19th, 1998. Matt and my Mom talk me into putting my name on the top of the restaurant, I wanted to call it "Smackwater Jack's." I tell them, "If it's my name on the marque, it's going to be my way." A quick note here; I had always been called "Pauli" growing up, there were several others but this one always stuck. While at the Green Bottle a couple of my regulars used to ask me to choose their dinner because the menu changed every night and I was very good at my job. Sheri Aust and Linda Maynor used to call me "E.F. Pauli" because when I told them what they should eat everyone listened like the old commercial, "When E.F. Hutton speaks everyone Listens." Now my nickname has made it into my business life. So that is the story of where "Pauli" came from. And as for the spelling, I had only ever been called "Pauli" I had never actually written it down. So when we were doing our first billboard we had to come up with a spelling. The phone company originally spelled it "Polly's" so no could find use until the phone books came out in December and March. Now back to the story, the restaurant is very, I mean very under capitalized but we struggle through until Mike Kaylor, the food critic from the Huntsville Times, comes out at our 6 weeks mark and reviews us. We knock it out of the park. We receive a perfect score for food, 4 Forks, and a perfect score for service, 4 Waiters. A brief history here; Green Bottle Grill had received a perfect score when they opened and again 5 years later. That was it, no other perfect scores had been given by the Huntsville Times. This is huge for our little 45 seat restaurant. The phone blows up, as we missed the phone books so no one knew our phone number. Now we are rolling. By Christmas of 1998 we are unable to sit 700 people a week, its true I keep count to show the banker so we could expand(Thanks Drew Tutt from 1st Alabama Bank for taking a chance on a young kid with no track record). That Holiday season was the busiest I have ever seen or been apart of in the restaurant business. How Matt and I did it
The Best Party Ever While at the Green Bottle Grill I meet Matt Martin. He came onto the staff as a "grill guy" a couple years after we opened the Bottle. After returning from Memphis I move into this great "Bachelor Pad" on Slaughter Road, we built a sand volleyball court, there was a pool, a great house all around. We start throwing really good parties. The next summer Matt moves in, that summer the parties get even more organized and much bigger. The "Mid Summer Night's Dream Party," some who were there call it something else but I can not mention in this format, well anyway, that party we figure 600+ people attended over the whole day. 13 Kegs of beer, 100+ pounds of pork shoulder, a live band out by the pool, 2 portopotties to keep as many people out of the house as possible, a casino in the garage and to vans shuttling people from West End Grill so the police do not figure out what is going and shut our party down to early. The party is still talked about today. Matt and I, with the help of a few more friends(Thanks Andy), knew that if we could do this, that we could feed 50 or so people every night and give them a memorable dining experience. After this party the Producers of Huck Finn, we meet these guys at the Bottle while they were filming in Mooresville, they asked us do do there "Wrap Party" at our house. Opportunity comes knocking and I answer the door The summer of 2001, the restaurant is doing great we have expanded restaurant once and have added a catering operation with a retail wine store attached. Huntsville is not ready for our style of catering (rather they do not pay to play). We close the catering side and move the wine store next to the restaurant. Anyway, like a said the summer of 2001 Jim and Susie Hudson send Ralph Gipson to the restaurant to see if I might be interested in opening a restaurant in Downtown Huntsville. They want to revitalize Downtown Huntsville. I agree to do so. I leave Mom and Bob to run the Restaurant and Wine Store. I open 4 full service restaurants from Fine dining(Pauli's Chophouse and Starfish) to causal dining(Humphrey's and Sazio). Not to dwell on the past, Susie and Jim Hudson buy me out in early 2006. Bob is diagnosed with terminal Cancer
My step-dad is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in the Summer of 2004, it does not look good. I leave the Downtown restaurants in the capable hands of the management team in place and return to take over Pauli's in October 2005. Bob's loses his battle with Small Cell Lung Cancer in February 2006. There are few issues at the restaurant that I needed to solved and I buy my Mom out in July 2006 to become sole owner of my original restaurant. The Next Expansion
I decide in July, when the space next door becomes available, to expand the restaurant. But since there is so much space, 1800 sqft (the original Pauli's was only 1500sqft), I decided to pull an old idea I had been working on out. And this how Vinotini is born, I actually thought of the name as I was working on a more casual yet still finer side of life venue. I wanted people to be able to come dine more often without feeling like they were doing the whole 9 yards. So we open Vinotini, www.Vinotini.com, in March of 2007. I have described it as a "Tapas Parlor," it has a huge bar with several table surrounding it and is attached to the new patio we had build in the late Summer of 2006. What I really wanted out of the expansion was some private party space, which we got. We added 2 rooms that can be booked separately or opened up into one large room holding 50 people. I do not expect us to be able to fill these rooms every night, at least not yet. They just allow us to rarely have to no "We can not seat you until 9pm" . I hate not being able to accommodate guests and this is solving a lot of those problems. THE END of the BEGINNING I am sure there will be much more to follow |