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YourObserver.com
JULY 2016
OUR TRUE GRIT
Photos by Jessica Salmond
Michael Garey checks in on the kitchen staff during dinner hour and monitors what menu items are being ordered at Lazy Lobster’s Longboat Key location.
SCHOOL OF
LIFE Michael Garey had great teachers — but they weren’t inside a classroom. ROBIN HARTILL | MANAGING EDITOR
A
n early mentor taught Michael Garey that what customers don’t see is just as important as what they do see. That’s why when he sees something
small on the floor of the kitchen — say, a lettuce leaf, which left on the floor, could cause someone to slip — he places a dollar bill over it and watches.
Sure enough, an employee will stop to pick it up. “Oh, you see it now,” Garey will say. That’s also why 3 to 4 p.m., when Lazy Lobster Longboat Key is closed to transition from lunch to dinner, is so important, even though guests will never see what happens during what Garey calls “the fastest hour in show business.” First, Garey makes sure staff is fed. “Eat,” he calls out to them. “Don’t dine.”
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There are patios to sweep, seating to figure out and lunchtime books to balance. Staff pounds the veal so that diners won’t hear a thumping sound during their meal. In season, when doors open, as many as 60 people will be waiting. During their meal, they’ll see Garey, the 57-year-old co-owner who calls himself “the original poster boy for ADD,” bouncing around the restaurant, greeting customers by name. Amid the restaurant’s bustle, they won’t know that most people thought Garey was crazy for believing he could make a go of a restaurant in 2009, mid-recession. And they never saw Garey on all those nights in the restaurant’s early years in which he dragged the pullout couch from the front of the restaurant into his office after everyone had left for the night, slept a couple hours and was up working again by the time people returned the next morning. They also won’t see that at 16, Garey left school for Christmas vacation during his junior year and never returned. “I’ve overcome it through hard work in a country where you can overcome it with hard work.”
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“I’ve overcome it through hard work in a country where you can overcome it with hard work.” – Michael Garey
Left: Michael Garey unpacks a delivery from Gold Coast Eagle Distributing. Below, left: For Garey, there’s never a moment to be wasted during the day. Left with a quiet moment, Garey will squeeze in a short workout usually once a day. “For 57, I’m in pretty decent shape,” he said. Below, right: Michael Garey looks at plans with Dan Alderson, left, co-owner of Tyler’s Ice Cream, and Bob Fracalossy, co-owner of the Lazy Lobster, right. The three are stirring up plans to open a gourmet ice cream store in July next to the Lazy Lobster.
nnn
At 16, Garey took his first job in the restaurant business — as a busboy at the old Misguided Mariner Restaurant on lower Main Street — while he was still enrolled in school because he wanted a career that would allow him to play golf during the day and work at night. CONTINUED ON PAGE 30
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 29
Michael Garey cuts featured dinner inserts and helps Erick Flanagan, general manager, stuff the inserts into the Lazy Lobster menus. Their record is 60 inserts in 10 minutes. During season, when the Longboat Key restaurant is open for lunch and dinner, tasks like these, filing paperwork and managing administrative duties must be done between 3 and 4 p.m. “The hour between… is insanity,” Flanagan said. “In one hour, you have to do all the ‘business.’ It’s a straight-up marathon.”
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He had recently moved to Sarasota with his family following his father’s retirement after 40 years of hard labor with the city of Buffalo, N.Y.’s water department. He still isn’t quite sure why he dropped out of school, though he figures his inability to sit still probably had something to do with it. More than three decades after he first planned to spend his days on the greens, he says he’s “down to” a 50- to 55-hour workweek — thanks to both the off-season and the help of his staff. That’s after countless years of toiling 80 or 90 hours each week. “It’s ironic that’s what drew me into the restaurant business, because the restaurant business killed my golf game,” says Garey. “I’ve probably played 15 times since 1980.” Although he never completed a formal education, Garey had great teachers. The first were his parents, who taught him he could do anything if he worked hard enough. His first mentor was Danny Wong, who owned a Chinese restaurant on the North Trail where Garey waited tables. He taught him to pay attention to everything in the dining room. None more influential than the late Titus Letschert, owner of the acclaimed Café L’Europe, where Garey took a job as a busboy in 1979 and spent the next 22 years working his way to the role of general manager.
Michael Garey stops in the office to help Catherine, his wife, with the design of the menu special for Fourth of July. Her calm demeanor helps him focus on the task at hand — an ability he said he sometimes lacks. “I’m a high-energy person, and an ADD poster boy,” he said. “Focus can be a problem.”
During open hours, Garey mingles with customers — and all the regulars know him. Phil Schneider and Mel Schwartz, full-time residents, said they are frequent visitors.
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Chef Tom Murawski and Michael Garey sample grouper scampi, a dish from the featured dinner menu. It’s a popular item, so the two check for flavor consistency and appearance. Garey said Murawski is his own worst critic.
“We’re not looking for ‘good,’ We’re looking for ‘great!’”
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He was a “wonderful but difficult” Dutchman who immigrated to New York City with $500 in his pocket and went on to a storied career in the restaurant industry. (He’s the one who taught Garey about the importance of what the diner doesn’t see and the dollarbill trick.) By the time the spot where Lazy Lobster’s Longboat Key location is located became available in 2009, Garey had a three-decade education in the restaurant business. He and his business partner, chef Bob Fracalossy, who also owns the original Lazy Lobster in Sarasota, believed a new location could succeed. No one was more skeptical than their wives. Garey knew that only politics was a hotter discussion topic than restaurants locally — so it was essential to be good from the start. “In two weeks, people would know if we were really, really good or really, really bad,” Garey says. He and Fracalossy invited Lazy Lobster’s mainland customers for half-price night for the grand opening. They posted a sign with an arrow directing customers to the new location outside the Centre Shops of Longboat Key, where it’s located. They learned they were in violation of the town of Longboat Key’s sign code, so they sent someone out to direct traffic there. CONTINUED ON PAGE 32
– Lazy Lobster Chef Tom Murawski
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31
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Seven years later, during a typical day of peak season, the Longboat Key restaurant will serve as many as 600 meals during a typical day. Garey and Fracalossy now also own Kacey’s Seafood & More in Sarasota, and Garey is working with the Alderson family, which owns Tyler’s Ice Cream, on a location next to Lazy Lobster Longboat Key. “It’s taken me 35 years to become an overnight success story,” Garey says. Because he’s well-spoken, Garey says most people wouldn’t guess that he never finished high school. But when it comes to written correspondence, he struggles. He’s “almost phobic” about making a spelling or grammatical mistake. He would tell a budding entrepreneur to get an education. “It’s still possible to succeed without one, but it’s a lot easier if you have one,” he says. The past two years, he’s helped raise money for dozens of students to do just that as chairman of the Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key’s Gourmet Lawn Party. The event raises money for local students and children’s charities, and under Garey’s leadership, it has grown from 600 or 700 attendees to around 1,200. His other lessons for succeeding: “Don’t let anyone talk you out of your dream work,” he says. And lastly: “Try to do something you’re passionate about. Then the long hours and difficult work don’t seem so difficult.” DaRuMa-DinnerFor2Ad Observer5x8.pdf
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“It’s taken me 35 years to become an overnight success story.” – Michael Garey
While he’s in his restaurant, Garey rarely stops moving. He has no notions of being above tasks — wherever he can lend a hand, he will: greeting customers, stuffing menus, stocking beer. But the restaurant business is his passion, and his energy for the business drives him. “It’s the desire to serve and get better doing it,” he said. “You can’t stand still.”
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