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HATTIE: (In the Studio) Hi. I'm Hattie Bryant. Several of our programs this season will come to you from rejuvenated, historic business districts.

(Voiceover) Since 1980, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street programs have generated billions of dollars in physical improvements, tens of thousands of net new businesses and hundreds of thousands of net new jobs. We're in Libertyville, Illinois, just 25 miles north of Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Libertyville's Main Street program has won the Great American Main Street Award. Much of the work to revitalize historic business districts has been done by small-business owners. Today, you'll meet Pat Elmquest and Bill Sugars, owners of Mickey Finn's. It's been a drinking establishment for over 100 years.

(Voiceover) It's Saturday night in downtown Libertyville.

Unidentified Man: Good thing about the stout, it's very creamy, it's very smooth.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Mickey Finn's is popping, as it is every night. And even with a recent expansion, customers still wait in line. This very spot in Libertyville has a long history as a tavern, but this latest version of Mickey Finn's is the creation of two corporate dropouts, Pat Elmquest and Bill Sugars. And it's bigger and probably better than it's ever been. Pat tells us how he became a pub owner.

PAT ELMQUEST (Mickey Finn's): I was on my way home from Los Angeles, and I stopped at Mickey Finn's on the way home for a bite to eat. And some friends were here, and we had dinner and we were chatting. And I think I alluded to the fact that, `I'm looking for something to do other than what I'm doing.' And one of them said, `Why don't you buy this place?' And I said, `I didn't know it was for sale.' I said, `I don't even know who owns it.' So I looked at it for a month and a half, at least, and the more I looked, the more I got interested. So I finally went home to my wife and I said, `Think I found something I'm interested in.' She says, `What?' And I said, `Mickey Finn's.' She said, `Oh, my God, a saloon?'

HATTIE: A saloon.

PAT: `Why would you do that?' you know?

HATTIE: Yeah.

PAT: Three months later, I owned it. So that's what happened.

HATTIE: And Diane still stayed married to you.

PAT: And she's still with me.

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HATTIE: (Voiceover) Pat was happy with the pub. Then Bill came along with ideas for expansion.

BILL SUGARS (Mickey Finn's): Pat's reputation in the community with Mickey Finn's was one of excellent burgers, chicken sandwiches, pita bread sandwiches, wings and Mexican food. The problem with this place--and you can see this building--this was it. It seated 62 people; it was always full. People would walk in, turn around and walk out. So in doing my market research, Libertyville actually came out to be the third-best market I looked at, behind Seattle and the Bay Area, and I didn't want to go back to those large, metropolitan areas.

HATTIE: In the research, how did you know this was the third-best place? What questions were you asking?

BILL: Well, I did a demographic profile of 13 markets dealing with income; industry, corporate and private; education; beer consumption, etc. I had contacted all of the economic development corporations that were in those communities, along with the chambers of commerce, and Libertyville actually came out to be the third-best market I looked at because it had, and may still have, the highest disposable income of any county in the United States--that's Lake County--because of the corporations that are in this area.

So I was driving down Milwaukee Avenue, and I'm thinking, `OK, I've got 13 markets, three that look really good. Libertyville is third.' I'm driving across, I see the park, look across the street and I see Mickey Finn's, I see the empty lot next door and I say, `Whew, why go someplace where nobody knows me and try and sell something?' Can you imagine walking in a restaurant that's successful and telling somebody who doesn't even know me from Adam, `I want you to go into really big debt with me, and I want to change the whole focus of your restaurant.' And I said, `Well, the chances of me going out West and finding somebody willing to do that is real slim.'

I knew Pat. We were casual friends. And I came in one day, after I finished my business plan and marketing plan, and said, `Pat,' I said, `I have an idea.' I said, `You always have a problem because you can't serve all your customers, OK? So what if we bought the land next door, build a brew pub, a microbrewery, expand the restaurant, and open this place up to all the community people that want to come in here?'

PAT: He said, `I have an idea. Would you have a few minutes someday?' So we picked a time. He came in, and we talked for an hour or so. And I knew nothing about the microbrew market or the brew-pub market.

BILL: So we went and visited a few in the area.

PAT: And the more I read and the more I talked to him and the more we discussed the demographics here, it started to make sense.

BILL: And then we went to Colorado and visited all the brew pubs that were starting up there.

HATTIE: So I know what you were doing. You were getting him fired up.

BILL: Absolutely, and it worked.

PAT: We went to 10 brew pubs. After about the third one, I knew this was it; `Let's go for it.' So we came back and I said, `If we can get the lot next door, let's do it.' So we negotiated for the lot, and the rest is history. We mortgaged everything we had. I got a little bit of private money from my family.

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BILL: And so we talked to five banks that called us, three of which we kicked out right away because they had no vision. They're the traditional bankers--you walk in, you give them this business plan this thick with all the pro forma, all the numbers, two years of research and they say, `OK. Well, you tell us the worst-case scenario.'

And that's all they were worried about. I said, `No, I want a bank that has vision, that understands what we're doing here, what we're bringing to the community.' And there were two banks that had that vision, and we ended up going with First America. And they were right across the street at the time, and they -- First America -- helped us secure an SBA loan. We had the business loan for the brewery and equipment, the furniture and fixtures from the bank; the building loan for the building, which we paid through Mark Loeb, who was our builder; then the two personal guaranteed loans, plus the Main Street, OK?

HATTIE: All right. Any regular guy would go, `Oh, my gosh, can I handle this on my shoulders.' That didn't scare you?

PAT: Well, no, it didn't. Having spent 25 years in sales, I'm pretty much people-oriented. And so it really--and a lot of the customer base here was local people, a lot of people I knew. So it wasn't like starting a new venture, particularly. It was a new way of making a living, but I was really excited about it.

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BILL: Again, I'm very fortunate. Both Pat and I have wives who are very confident in our ability...

HATTIE: I know. They cut up their Neiman-Marcus credit cards, said, `Well, we won't use these for two years.'

BILL: Well, yeah. They looked and said, `You guys are crazy, but if you really believe in it,' you know, they backed us 100 percent. We had absolutely no problem there.

HATTIE: So when you went to the bank and got all these loans to do all this expansion, what did Diane say?

PAT: She says, `Do you realize we're 50 years old and we now own nothing?' I said, `Sweetheart, you can't look back, baby.' I said, `It's done.' She said, `You know, most guys in your position couldn't sleep.' I said, `It's too late.'

HATTIE: He actually let you come in and have a part of his restaurant.

BILL: Yeah, because he saw the opportunity. He knew that he was closed in...

HATTIE: He was at the edge.

BILL: Right.

HATTIE: He couldn't do anymore.

BILL: There wasn't much more he could do because there was no more space. And the bar needed some renovation, and he wanted to provide some more food items, which he couldn't do. The kitchen was down there. It was...

HATTIE: Tiny.

PAT: We had a little 50-square-foot kitchen, very small menu. But even then, our food was the number-one attraction.

BILL: The one thing that was devoid in this market was good, handcrafted beer. And when I was doing consulting work, after I left corporate America for Abbott Laboratories, I was traveling around the United States. And I would always book myself into cities that had brew pubs or microbreweries.

HATTIE: So you were doing research for seven or eight years before.

BILL: Actually, it was about a two-year time period that--when I left Schering-Plough in 1990, I spent the next two years putting the business plan and marketing plan together. And I would go visit brew pubs and microbreweries in the morning, and I'd do my consulting work in the afternoon and evenings. And there's four things that make this business work: location--we have the best location in Lake County. You've got 28,000 cars a day that go up and down Milwaukee Avenue.

HATTIE: How do you know that?

BILL: By surveys--traffic surveys.

HATTIE: OK.

BILL: Yeah, it's available. And anybody can get that type of information from their Economic Development Council or their Chamber of Commerce. They do traffic surveys all the time. So that's number one. Number two is consistency and quality of food for value, and the same thing for beer, consistency and quality of beer. And the fourth is staffing.

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HATTIE: (Voiceover) Brewmeister Ryan Ashley is critical to the success of the brewery, and he's not the first one in his family to mix magic in a brew house.

RYAN ASHLEY (Brewmeister): (Voiceover) We make, on an annual basis, about 25 different styles of beer. We typically have between five and eight styles that stay on, on a pretty regular basis. And then there's other seasonal rotations, just...

HATTIE: And if we want to taste this, when could we taste this?

RYAN: Since this is a lager, it's going to be about a month to a month and a half. (Voiceover) And this has been my passion for quite a few years. Actually, it was--this is how I spent my time when I wasn't working or studying. It started off as a hobby. It's been in my family blood. You know, during Prohibition, everyone was a bootlegger and...

HATTIE: (Voiceover) In your family?

RYAN: (Voiceover) In my family.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Really?

RYAN: (Voiceover) Both sides of the family, yeah. It's my hobby gone awry. Now it's my work. Now I need a new hobby.

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BILL: All of our staff is required to go through specific training. We don't make them go to weekly meetings, but we have training sessions that deals with customer service. They have to be able to describe the beers and the menu items. And we have a rule here: When you come in to Mickey Finn's to go to work, you leave your troubles outside, you know?

HATTIE: How do you find people that do that well? Because you don't have time to teach people that.

BILL: No. I think when we hire people, we're very specific on who we hire. They have to have a certain personality 'cause you can't teach people to be--they don't have to be funny, per se, but they have to be pleasant. They have to smile. They have to be willing to interact. And I know one of the other things that I was getting at just a minute ago was, body language is extremely important and...

HATTIE: Oh. So when you interview, do you look for those things?

BILL: Absolutely.

HATTIE: You're looking for people to--like eye contact?

BILL: Absolutely. And people that will read my body signals and give me feedback on that, because if they can't read my body signals, they're not gonna be able to read a customer's body signals. If all they're worried about is regurgitating our menu and giving them the beer sample sheet and say, `Here, here's our beers,' rather than try and romance it you know, `We make all of our beers on premise, and this chart describes each of our beers. What style beer do you usually drink?' And if they say, a Heineken, they say a Miller Lite, we can then take that information and translate it to our beer sheets. So we give them plenty of tools, but they have to be able to understand the ability to read the customer.

For example, you're walking through the restaurant, customers are looking around like this, they want something. They're not just doing that. So you have to be attentive and observant and be able to react to that need 'cause that's what separates us from all the other restaurants. And so they have to be able to react to my manager's body language and my body language 'cause the two things--like I was saying, first of all, customers don't like to feel rushed. Number two is they hate to be ignored. And if you're busy, all you have to do to someone is say, `I'll be with you in just a minute.' I said, `Here's a beer sheet. Here's a menu. Give me a few minutes. We're really busy and I'll get right back to you.' But when you walk right by and ignore their (makes pointing motion) like this or their (makes face) like this, it irritates them. So...

HATTIE: So what you're looking for in the interview is someone who's sensitive to all these things.

BILL: Absolutely. Absolutely. Our people make good money. Pat and I treat them very, very well. We have a very relaxed environment here. Some restaurants have been known to sort of be a slave-driving mentality. Well, Pat and I made a promise--we both came from corporate America, Pat from the plastics industry and me from health care--that we weren't gonna create that corporate environment here. All we ask is when people are here, they give us the same effort that we give this place. When they leave, they're on their own. But while they're here, they have a responsibility to the business and to the customer.

HATTIE: So the teaching point here is: Don't just run out and start a business.

BILL: No, 'cause you're destined to fail. Unless you're extremely fortunate and you fall into something that--you might as well win the lottery. And, see, I don't believe luck. Luck is a word. Luck is being ready to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. And for probably about eight years, I've always been dabbling with ideas of, `What would I do if I wasn't doing this?' And there came a time--I was about 42, 43, and the opportunities came to me that I was fed up with corporate America, only from a st...

HATTIE: Well, what was that? You know what was that...

BILL: ...the frustration of dealing with a hierarchy that is very much in tune with bottom-line profits and not really too worried about long-range planning. And everyone goes through a stage. I went through the stage where that was very important. In my late 20s and 30s, you know, position, title, perks was very important...

HATTIE: And now you come...

BILL: ...like everybody.

HATTIE: ...to work in shorts and tennis shoes.

BILL: Absolutely. This is my outfit and my hat. That's my trademark.

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HATTIE: Here are two men who were willing to take their idea to the bank and the SBA and the Main Street program. When Mickey Finn's was doing under $500,000 in sales, these two signed personally on five large loans. Today, with over $3 million in sales, this brew pub is proof that with an infusion of capital for a well-researched idea, entrepreneurs can grow a business and create jobs. Pat and Bill have realized their dream to provide a meeting place for Libertyville and to bring nightlife to a once-quiet downtown. Because of small-business owners who have courage and vision, Main Street projects everywhere are thriving and changing the face of America.

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PAT: (Voiceover) Our license allows us to sell beer to go, so customers who enjoy the beer they drink with dinner can take a little bit home--a little bit of Mickey Finn's home with them after the evening. For us, it's a way to advertise our name and our product out in the community at a very low cost.

BILL: People have a real misconception of the cash flow necessary to run a business, whether it be a restaurant, a furniture store, a coffee shop, ice cream parlor--the labor, the taxes, the upkeep, the maintenance. Our repair and maintenance on this place--we're open seven days a week, about 355 days a year--is probably 30 percent higher than I could have estimated because of the wear and tear. I mean, we get--on a busy week, we'll have 8,000 to 10,000 people come through here. And, you know, they all walk on the floors, they all plop down in the chairs.

HATTIE: They all flush the toilets.

BILL: Flush the toilets.

HATTIE: Lots of beer.

BILL: And I am chief of the plungers.

HATTIE: You're chief of the plungers?

BILL: Yeah. That's my job.

HATTIE: You do toilets?

BILL: I do toilets. I don't do windows, but I do toilets. But they don't understand the hands-on. And one thing that works very well with Pat and I in this partnership is that we're both here all the time.

HATTIE: You mean somebody's here all the time.

BILL: Right. Right. Well, yeah, right. We're not both here all the time.

HATTIE: Somebody--an owner is here all the time.

BILL: I'd say 80 percent of the time. The only time we'll try and duck out is during slow periods, or maybe we'll sneak a weekend and get away.

HATTIE: So how do you do that?

BILL: Well, one week I work nights, the next week I work days. And then Pat works the opposite of me.

HATTIE: OK. So that's--way you both have a feel for how the business is going in those time frames.

BILL: And we have a very good management staff, and they're very capable and we entrust them with the day-to-day operations. But what makes this business unique, in this business--brew-pub business or restaurant business--is owners. Customers like to see your owners. Your staff likes to see the owners; that we're not afraid to bus tables, take out trash, plunge toilets, get behind the grill if we have to. I mean, that really is critical in this particular business. And one thing that we've done is we've been requested by several communities to--`Why don't you come down and build another Mickey Finn's?' You can't be two places at once. And our goal in doing this--and people don't believe me--isn't tied into money. It really isn't, OK? There's two basic reasons Pat and I did this. First of all, we really believe in this community, and it's really satisfying to give something to a community, to see the community respond back. That's really neat.

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BILL: I'm an Army brat, and I used to move every three to four years. I really had no roots. And it's so neat now. I've been here eight--oh, almost 10 years. You walk down the street and you wave. And it sounds sorta hokey...

HATTIE: `Hey, Bill.'

BILL: ...like "Mayberry, R.F.D." But, you know, this is that type of community, and it makes for a very pleasant living experience. And number two is--giving to the community to get something back--number two is just the sheer joy of doing something that everyone thought you were crazy to do. Everyone says, `Why are you gonna mess with Mickey Finn's? It'll never work.'

HATTIE: So your corporate buddies, the ones that are about your age--and you've got a little gray hair; you're 50-something.

BILL: Fifty-one.

HATTIE: It sounds like--I mean, I would think that they're winding down and you're winding up.

BILL: Yeah. I think the thing that's important for people to realize is you'll know when it's your time to do something different. You can't--there's no formula--you can't say you're 36, you're 42, you're 45. I have a lot of people come in and say, `I really admire what you and Pat did. You had the chutzpa to go out there and take this risk and take this job.' Well, first of all, it wasn't as risky as people think. Yes, it's a restaurant, but the brew-pub failure rate's like 1/6th of what the restaurant failure rate is.

Secondarily, we had a lot of background data that knows, barring a catastrophe or a complete collapse of the economy, we're gonna be OK, not as good as we're doing now, but our worst-case scenario was pretty good. So the risk wasn't as high as everyone thought it was. But I think the thing is Pat knew when his time was right to leave corporate life and buy the bar in 1990. I knew when my time was right. And everyone will know. There just comes a time in your life when you say, `I gotta do some--I don't want to be doing this when I'm 65 years old.'

There's tons of resources out there, but you gotta be willing to ask questions. Most people are looking for something that'll land in their lap. They'll read these magazines about franchises and the get-rich-quick schemes on TV, these infomercials. Nothing's free. Nothing comes that's worthwhile unless you're willing to bust your rear end. And I tell my kids that. I tell all the people that come in wanting ideas and wanting us to help them get started. And I say, `Well, are you willing to do this, that, that? Do you have X amount of dollars? Do you have the financing?' `Well, no.' I say, `Well, when you do, come back and we'll talk.' But there's no such thing as a free ride.

PAT: We've talked to so many corporate people that come in, and they were tired of the same things we were. But it's a real big commitment, not only personally, but, you know, when you have a wife involved and kids going to college, it's gotta be a passion that you don't look back. And you've got to have that type of mentality. Money just doesn't necessarily do it. You can be creative with financing, but when you have to put your back to the wall, like Bill and I did, 100 percent, it takes a special type of person.

HATTIE: Are you gonna be brewing beer when you're 65?

BILL: I'll be drinking it. My goal in life is to consistently drink beer for the rest of my life. And our beer--see, we have one good advantage with our beer. Even though the FDA won't let us put it on the labels, it actually--with no preservatives and no chemicals, no rice, no corn--there's four ingredients--it actually has a lot of vitamin B, vitamin C. Our Oatmeal Stout is like drinking breakfast.

HATTIE: OK.

BILL: It's got oatmeal.

HATTIE: So it's your major food group, right?

BILL: Absolutely.

HATTIE: So what's in the future?

PAT: This is my future.

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HATTIE: (Voiceover) Mickey Finn's is part of a revitalized, historic business district which has a mix of retail stores. I walked down the street to see Sue Montgomery, owner of Heartland Cornucopia.

Hey, Sue.

SUE MONTGOMERY (Heartland Cornucopia): Hi. HATTIE: I was hoping that... (Voiceover) She told me about one of the marketing tools that is working for her and some of her colleagues.

SUE: We couldn't reach the people that we needed to on our own expenses, so we came together--all of us are a part of Main Street--and we developed this newsletter (referring to The Villager). For instance, our grand opening is in here. Or we all have coupons in the back.

HATTIE: Who do you mail this to?

SUE: We mail this to all of our customers and every resident of our town. And what we did is we--everyone consolidated their mailing lists and we...

HATTIE: You mean you shared your lists with everyone?

SUE: We shared our lists with everybody because...

HATTIE: Did you have fights over that or discussions?

SUE: Not at all. It was--we knew that whoever shopped in my store was shopping in her store. And if we can reach one more person, then that's one more customer for me. So we brought all of that together. We have a huge database of probably about 40,000, and we trim it and decide what this issue is all about and then we send it to the 25,000 that we can. And as we grow and add more businesses, we'll, of course, mail to more people.

HATTIE: So the word is collaboration, isn't it?

SUE: Definitely. You have to work together to make it happen.

HATTIE: Don't compete; collaborate. Is it working?

SUE: Definitely. It's the most a--it's the only advertising I do.

HATTIE: Our viewers are giving us a lot of great ideas, and we want to start sharing them with you. (Voiceover) One of our viewers writes, `When I started my business, I tried to be all things to all people, just as my competition was doing, and growth was slow. On one of your programs, a business owner said, "There are riches in niches." When I heard that, I pulled my team together, and we decided that we could go after our own niche. By applying your advice, we have tripled our billings, and today, our sales exceed $3 million. Thank you, thank you, thank you!' John Fareed, president, Fareed & Company, advertising and public relations, Norfolk, Virginia.

The Closing of the Show.

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