Regional mom-and-pop diners fight the big boys
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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star
WAHOO — Out along Chestnut Street, the Wahoo portion of U.S. 77, the Wigwam’s competition looms large.
Burger King. Runza. Subway. Dairy Queen. Pizza Hut. Gambino’s Pizza.
More recently, a Chinese restaurant has been added to the downtown mix, and the Press Room sports bar is expected to open in September.
Is there still room enough for all these eating places in a town of barely 4,000 people?
Can Silvia and Clayton Wade and their Wigwam Cafe — in continuous operation since 1930, home of the hot-beef sandwich and chicken-fried steak — hold their own against quicker dining alternatives and their national television hype?
Well, there’s certainly no look of surrender on the face of the 37-year-old Hungarian immigrant as she sits in a corner booth next to her husband. And there’s no noticeable darkening in Silvia Wade’s mood as she looks past the Wednesday special toward slipperier questions.
“I’m doing my best and I do it from my heart,” she said, “because I love what I do. And I do my best to make everybody happy — that when they leave my door, they had a great meal and they’re coming back again.”
What about all that big-name competition?
“There’s always competition,” Wade said, “no matter what business you’re in.”
No matter how resolute she might sound, restaurant territory has become more crowded as nationally franchised corporations extend their reach far beyond Lincoln and Omaha to towns of 2,000 or fewer people.
Mark Lutz, president of the Lincoln-based Cooperative Food Service, did a quick data search on that point, using his 1,200 member restaurants as a starting point.
As recently as 1980, Lutz said, there were 45 limited-menu restaurants outside Nebraska’s two largest population centers. Twenty-five years later, there are more than 200.
In recent years, “the biggest explosion has been Subways. There are 45 Subways now in smaller communities,” he said.
Locally owned restaurants that depend largely on word-of-mouth advertising have to be tough to succeed in that retail environment, he said.
“I think what it does is it makes the local entrepreneur a better entrepreneur if you’re going to succeed in that type of competition.”
In some cases, tough is not enough. Often, it’s the same hungry customers who retailers large and small are trying to tug toward different seats.
“The turnover for restaurants is very high anyway,” Lutz said, “and some of these people in small communities, when another restaurant comes in and takes those seats, they just can’t afford it, if they’re already working on small margins anyway.”
Back at the Wigwam, sandwiched between the Wahoo State Bank and the Lasting Looks hair salon, the mid-morning coffee hour looks busy enough to endure some fairly formidable odds.
At least six of its booths are occupied, including one shared by local businessmen and loyal customers Steve Gerdts, Greg Hohl and Tom Svoboda.
In the small world of a small town, Gerdts is the metal fabricator who built the grill that Clayton Wade was using 20 feet away to fry eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and pancakes.
Gerdts, 47, said he’s probably in the Wigwam eight times a week for coffee and twice for breakfast. His Friday routine usually starts at 7:15 a.m. with three eggs, sausage and toast.
Banker Hohl and Svoboda, owner of an advertising business with his wife, are among his frequent companions.
“There’s always a place for a home-style, sit-down, family restaurant,” Hohl said.
Svoboda said he likes interacting with the person refilling his coffee cup. He also likes a lot of the other intangibles and tangibles at the Wigwam, including that hot-beef sandwich.
“It’s fresh food,” he said. “You don’t have something warmed up.”
Hohl describes Silvia Wade as “an outstanding cook. And her specials are tremendous.”
There’s more to know about the woman who wants to be known for having the best food in town, if not necessarily the fastest food. Some of it might keep her and her husband, who calls himself her “main grunt,” in business right up to retirement.
She was raised in Romania, left its communist ways behind for Germany, and joined a sister in Cleveland in 1992.
She held three food-related jobs there at one time and saved the $10,800 she needed in one year to buy a Chrysler Sundance.
The fitness buff met her husband, then an aircraft technician far from his Wahoo roots, while working out at a Cleveland gym.
“I was observing her technique,” Clayton Wade said with a grin.
The Wades live up a long flight of stairs from the restaurant in an apartment that occupies all of the second floor.
The restaurant opens five days a week at 6 a.m. and Sundays at 8 a.m. On Tuesday, when the business is closed, Silvia Wade typically runs 12 miles. She arises at 4 a.m. to run on Sundays.
If the Wigwam eventually becomes a victim of trends in the restaurant business, it is not likely to be for lack of effort and enthusiasm.
“God gives you two arms and hands,” Silvia Wade said. “And you can do a lot of things if you work.”
Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.
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