Property taxes are high. Rents are brutal. In cold months shopkeepers have to pay both when many of their customers are away or snowed in. Grr.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your company could shed all that brick and mortar and simply roll free to where the business is?
Some people are doing just that.
Trucks and vans are bringing beauty parlors to your parlor. Pet groomers make the rounds with spas on wheels. Massage went mobile years ago. Auto detailers are also, fittingly, on the road.
In the Hamptons, Dr. Seth Gordon realized a while back that lots of East End vacationers didn’t have local care for their kids. “In the summer you get an influx of 200,000 kids out here, and the pediatric centers don’t have the capacity to handle them,” said the part-time East Hampton resident in a New York Times story.
“Seeing a niche,” he created a practice that has no office. Instead, he supplies something your elders might remember: house calls. His only trappings: a cell phone, a medical bag and his car. Starting small, “soon he was inundated with calls for his services,” said the Times story, and his fame and portability went viral.
What’s next? Pizza, of course.
But not just any pizza. Gourmet, wood-oven pizza baked fresh at your backyard party on the back of a fire-engine red 1943 International Harvester truck. It’s the creation of 26-year-old Matthew Michel of Greenport, and the name of his new business tells it all: “Rolling in Dough.”
Michel came to the North Fork from West Haven, Conn., and went into partnership with Barbara Michelson, then of Cutchogue, a well-known caterer and Cordon Bleu chef. “She’s brilliant,” he said. “I learned a lot from her.” Their two-year collaboration ended recently when she moved to New Hampshire.
Looking for his next venture, Michel remembered seeing a catering truck in New Haven, Conn., and, with the help of its owner, went to work on his own version. The 1943 farm truck, found on the Internet, came from Maryland. A $10,000 pizza oven was shipped from Florence, Italy. Wheeler’s Garage in Southold got the motor cranking and Ted’s Auto Body in Peconic applied the flaming paint. Michel built tables. An awning, refrigeration and a freezer were added, along with a cappuccino machine and gelato trays, and already the oven on wheels is firing up people’s imaginations.
“I’ve got 10 parties booked,” Michel said last week. And that was before the photo spread came out in Vogue. That’s right, Vogue, whose editor, Anna Wintour, saw the truck at a function, “fell in love with it and wanted to do a spread,” Michel said.
With such boosts, the young entrepreneur hopes that someday his business really will be rolling in dough. “If I had 100 parties per summer, I’d really be doing well,” he mused.
But first he had to take the leap, and it was a big one, an investment of more than $100,000 on a style of catering new to the East End. Was it scary? “Very much so,” he said. “But I’d rather do something than nothing. You’ve got to take a little risk.”
Some advisers were leery of the idea. “They thought people wouldn’t catch onto the idea of just pizza,” Michel recalled. “I disagreed.” He’d seen a similar venture succeed in Connecticut. “It works,” he said. “It’s definitely gimmicky, but it’s fun and people like to have it at a party.”
What would Michelson, his Cordon Bleu mentor, think of it all? “I think she’d be very proud of me,” he said.
A big plus for him was the minus factor – no property taxes or rent. His only overhead is gas, maintenance and permits, plus a marginal outlay for small amounts of time in earthbound kitchens doing prep work. “I skip a lot of expenses,” Michel confirmed. Finding help hasn’t been too hard, since he was able to call on friends and friends of friends who like the quirky, outdoorsy spin on the catering business.
And when the weather turns bleak and customers go south, he might migrate with them. He’s also weighing the idea of trying a season at a ski resort. When your catering hall has wheels, why not?
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 24, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Forget the black buffaloes; there are signs of life in the bays
Pardon my paranoia, but it seems that signs and omens are everywhere abounding these days. I know people always say things like that, especially when the sky simply won’t quit raining, but it’s getting a bit overt of late.
Consider the bison. Among many Native American tribes, the birth of a white buffalo is considered an omen of peace and good fortune ahead. So what are we to make of the recent birth of not one but two extremely rare black buffaloes at North Quarter Farm in Riverhead? Will the crops fail? Is recession bound for depression? Could the Shinnecock Indian casino create a quagmire of urban blight and pestilence?
On the positive portent side, hundreds of bottlenose dolphins were recently observed frolicking in the Sound. At the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, that’s being seen as a sign of hope for the health of the Sound.
Of course, doomsayers could attribute the dolphins’ return to warming waters. People are already bewailing the Sound’s infesting plague of sea squirts, bottom-clogging filter-feeders who eat their own brains. Anybody see a Wall Street augury there?
Those attuned to aquatic signs of the apocalypse might have been struck by last week’s letter to The Suffolk Times about a supposed sheepshead caught in Southold. The writer, part-time Florida resident John Glaessgen, said it was actually a black drum, a fish much more at home in warmer waters. Glaessgen finished with a fine summation: “Nature remains mysterious.”
Gene Kelly at Montauk Sport Fishing would agree. All kinds of southern swimmers, like triggerfish and red snappers, have been turning up in East End nets, but they’ve been doing so for a long time. “Guys started catching tarpon over 30 years ago,” he said. Rod-and-reel anglers reported catching cobia and even bonefish in Great South Bay five years ago, he said.
To those who say it’s all about global warming, Kelly tends to side with Glaessgen’s “mysterious nature” position. As Exhibit A he points to the 178-pound porbeagle shark caught off Montauk a few weeks ago. This is a very northern fish, ranging up into Arctic waters. “The weather’s been colder this year, but still, it’s very, very strange.” So, based on the porbeagle portent, should we be on the lookout for global cooling?
In the end, perhaps it’s best if we do as Kim Tetrault does.
Tetrault manages (take a deep breath) the Cornell Cooperative Extension Shellfish Hatchery at the Suffolk County Marine Environmental Learning Center in Southold. On the subject of sea squirts, for instance, he said, “I’ve never seen so many.” Then he adds quickly, “But if I worry about everything, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
Tetrault and others started reseeding East End bays 15 years ago. “Nothing happened,” he said last week. Clam, scallop and oyster seedlings by the millions were sowed every year, only to die. One of the richest bays in the world had become a wet desert.
To many onlookers it started to feel like a lost cause. The seeders began to seem like a mapless army slogging along to a dismal fate. Tetrault recalls banishing that thought, saying, “We’ve just got to keep with it. One year nature will play ball.”
And then, about three years ago, he was paddling around Broadwater Cove in Cutchogue. “I looked on the banks and they were covered with oyster set,” he said. “That was the first time I’d really seen a set take hold well.”
Since then they’ve spread out, to the point where the words “Peconic Bay oysters” aren’t just sadly nostalgic anymore. More good news: “Last year’s scallop crop was the best since the brown tide.” That dark date, 1985, will be forever etched in East End minds.
But this is now, and Tetrault sees a return of “good, fresh bio film,” a kind of “slimy marine coating” that suggests life. There could also be more plankton around. And maybe the bigger bivalve broodstock has finally reached a positive tipping point. “It could just be cyclical,” he said, “but it seems to have taken hold. Nature,” Tetrault concluded with some wonderment, “seems to have rebounded.”
From all this, perhaps we can distill something called the Tetrault doctrine. It is this: Damn the omens (and frustration, and logic) – full steam ahead.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 17, 2009
Consider the bison. Among many Native American tribes, the birth of a white buffalo is considered an omen of peace and good fortune ahead. So what are we to make of the recent birth of not one but two extremely rare black buffaloes at North Quarter Farm in Riverhead? Will the crops fail? Is recession bound for depression? Could the Shinnecock Indian casino create a quagmire of urban blight and pestilence?
On the positive portent side, hundreds of bottlenose dolphins were recently observed frolicking in the Sound. At the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, that’s being seen as a sign of hope for the health of the Sound.
Of course, doomsayers could attribute the dolphins’ return to warming waters. People are already bewailing the Sound’s infesting plague of sea squirts, bottom-clogging filter-feeders who eat their own brains. Anybody see a Wall Street augury there?
Those attuned to aquatic signs of the apocalypse might have been struck by last week’s letter to The Suffolk Times about a supposed sheepshead caught in Southold. The writer, part-time Florida resident John Glaessgen, said it was actually a black drum, a fish much more at home in warmer waters. Glaessgen finished with a fine summation: “Nature remains mysterious.”
Gene Kelly at Montauk Sport Fishing would agree. All kinds of southern swimmers, like triggerfish and red snappers, have been turning up in East End nets, but they’ve been doing so for a long time. “Guys started catching tarpon over 30 years ago,” he said. Rod-and-reel anglers reported catching cobia and even bonefish in Great South Bay five years ago, he said.
To those who say it’s all about global warming, Kelly tends to side with Glaessgen’s “mysterious nature” position. As Exhibit A he points to the 178-pound porbeagle shark caught off Montauk a few weeks ago. This is a very northern fish, ranging up into Arctic waters. “The weather’s been colder this year, but still, it’s very, very strange.” So, based on the porbeagle portent, should we be on the lookout for global cooling?
In the end, perhaps it’s best if we do as Kim Tetrault does.
Tetrault manages (take a deep breath) the Cornell Cooperative Extension Shellfish Hatchery at the Suffolk County Marine Environmental Learning Center in Southold. On the subject of sea squirts, for instance, he said, “I’ve never seen so many.” Then he adds quickly, “But if I worry about everything, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
Tetrault and others started reseeding East End bays 15 years ago. “Nothing happened,” he said last week. Clam, scallop and oyster seedlings by the millions were sowed every year, only to die. One of the richest bays in the world had become a wet desert.
To many onlookers it started to feel like a lost cause. The seeders began to seem like a mapless army slogging along to a dismal fate. Tetrault recalls banishing that thought, saying, “We’ve just got to keep with it. One year nature will play ball.”
And then, about three years ago, he was paddling around Broadwater Cove in Cutchogue. “I looked on the banks and they were covered with oyster set,” he said. “That was the first time I’d really seen a set take hold well.”
Since then they’ve spread out, to the point where the words “Peconic Bay oysters” aren’t just sadly nostalgic anymore. More good news: “Last year’s scallop crop was the best since the brown tide.” That dark date, 1985, will be forever etched in East End minds.
But this is now, and Tetrault sees a return of “good, fresh bio film,” a kind of “slimy marine coating” that suggests life. There could also be more plankton around. And maybe the bigger bivalve broodstock has finally reached a positive tipping point. “It could just be cyclical,” he said, “but it seems to have taken hold. Nature,” Tetrault concluded with some wonderment, “seems to have rebounded.”
From all this, perhaps we can distill something called the Tetrault doctrine. It is this: Damn the omens (and frustration, and logic) – full steam ahead.
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 17, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
East End wineries face the music
You’re in the tasting room of an East End winery, sampling a corpulent, jammy cabernet. Life is good. It gets even better when the guitarists in the corner start playing your favorite song, “Unchained Melody.”
But wait. A guy at the next table is writing something in a little black book.
Uh oh. You’ve just unwittingly participated in something that could end up costing the vineyard thousands of dollars. Why? Because “Unchained Melody” isn’t unchained at all.
In fact, it’s one of some 8.5 million copyrighted songs whose use is protected by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, better known as ASCAP.
In recent weeks ASCAP has been cracking down all along the East End’s wine trail. Chris Baiz of Old Field Vineyard in Southold said it began for him with a few letters offering a license that would cover use of all ASCAP songs for the one-year fee of $446. The number, based on such factors as size of venue and number of performances per week, is at the low end; some other vineyards are being charged more than double that.
Those first messages were followed last week with a mailed package noting that Old Field’s payment had not been received. To achieve harmony, the enclosed forms should be filled out and a check sent. Otherwise, unlicensed use of copyrighted material could result in damages of $750 to $30,000 per infringed-upon song, plus attorney fees and court costs.
As of last week Baiz had not written the check for a number of reasons. One is the assumption that Old Field hosts as many as three musical acts per week. “We do zero,” Baiz said.
But other vineyards do plenty. And so, in Baiz’s role as president of the Long Island Wine Council, he was planning to consult with the council’s executive director, Steve Bate.
Bate told me it all began with the Winterfest jazz series, created to help fill East End tasting rooms during the last two off-seasons. “It’s been very successful,” he said. Enough so, apparently, to catch the attention of Wendy Campbell, ASCAP’s area licensing manager.
After hearing of her stops at regional vineyards, Bate called Campbell to seek a compromise and preserve Winterfest. Perhaps a “festival fee” could cover all vineyards at a more reasonable cost. Or maybe a governmental umbrella could be created, since the event has county and state support.
So far, no luck. Meanwhile, the crackdown has stretched to winery music of all seasons, and vintners have begun trumpeting their displeasure.
“Are they trying to put us out of business?” asked the events manager at one area vineyard. “How can they control all the music played in the world? It’s going to cost more to patrol than they can collect. It’s absurd.”
Intellectual property lawyer Betty Tufariello of Mt. Sinai, who has worked for the Wine Council before, had some thoughts on that. “ASCAP is very aggressive in promoting and protecting its members,” she said. By throwing its net hard and wide, covering even small vineyards, the company seeks to protect its turf. “It’s not so much the money,” she said. “Principally, they don’t want to open a door and create a slippery slope. If they let one vineyard do it, where do they draw the line?”
She expressed sympathy for ASCAP’s herculean task of protecting its writers, but also concern for the struggles of vineyards and musicians.
To her the key question is: Do vineyards use music in a commercial nature? In her opinion, no. “They’re not selling tickets,” Tufariello said. “They’re selling wine and using the music as background.”
Yes, but they’re using something that doesn’t belong to them, said Vincent Candilora, ASCAP’s senior vice president of licensing. That can be remedied with a license, which he considers cheap for what it affords: access to 8.5 million songs. “I never understand the type of resistance we get sometimes over what is essentially such a low-cost item,” he said. “On a day-to-day basis, it’s probably less than a dollar a day.”
That’s not quite true for vineyards, which tend to offer music twice a week or so, and only during tourist seasons. But Candilora is unmoved when people lament about the struggles of the small-business person. His response: “You want to talk small-business person? Become a songwriter.”
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 3, 2009
But wait. A guy at the next table is writing something in a little black book.
Uh oh. You’ve just unwittingly participated in something that could end up costing the vineyard thousands of dollars. Why? Because “Unchained Melody” isn’t unchained at all.
In fact, it’s one of some 8.5 million copyrighted songs whose use is protected by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, better known as ASCAP.
In recent weeks ASCAP has been cracking down all along the East End’s wine trail. Chris Baiz of Old Field Vineyard in Southold said it began for him with a few letters offering a license that would cover use of all ASCAP songs for the one-year fee of $446. The number, based on such factors as size of venue and number of performances per week, is at the low end; some other vineyards are being charged more than double that.
Those first messages were followed last week with a mailed package noting that Old Field’s payment had not been received. To achieve harmony, the enclosed forms should be filled out and a check sent. Otherwise, unlicensed use of copyrighted material could result in damages of $750 to $30,000 per infringed-upon song, plus attorney fees and court costs.
As of last week Baiz had not written the check for a number of reasons. One is the assumption that Old Field hosts as many as three musical acts per week. “We do zero,” Baiz said.
But other vineyards do plenty. And so, in Baiz’s role as president of the Long Island Wine Council, he was planning to consult with the council’s executive director, Steve Bate.
Bate told me it all began with the Winterfest jazz series, created to help fill East End tasting rooms during the last two off-seasons. “It’s been very successful,” he said. Enough so, apparently, to catch the attention of Wendy Campbell, ASCAP’s area licensing manager.
After hearing of her stops at regional vineyards, Bate called Campbell to seek a compromise and preserve Winterfest. Perhaps a “festival fee” could cover all vineyards at a more reasonable cost. Or maybe a governmental umbrella could be created, since the event has county and state support.
So far, no luck. Meanwhile, the crackdown has stretched to winery music of all seasons, and vintners have begun trumpeting their displeasure.
“Are they trying to put us out of business?” asked the events manager at one area vineyard. “How can they control all the music played in the world? It’s going to cost more to patrol than they can collect. It’s absurd.”
Intellectual property lawyer Betty Tufariello of Mt. Sinai, who has worked for the Wine Council before, had some thoughts on that. “ASCAP is very aggressive in promoting and protecting its members,” she said. By throwing its net hard and wide, covering even small vineyards, the company seeks to protect its turf. “It’s not so much the money,” she said. “Principally, they don’t want to open a door and create a slippery slope. If they let one vineyard do it, where do they draw the line?”
She expressed sympathy for ASCAP’s herculean task of protecting its writers, but also concern for the struggles of vineyards and musicians.
To her the key question is: Do vineyards use music in a commercial nature? In her opinion, no. “They’re not selling tickets,” Tufariello said. “They’re selling wine and using the music as background.”
Yes, but they’re using something that doesn’t belong to them, said Vincent Candilora, ASCAP’s senior vice president of licensing. That can be remedied with a license, which he considers cheap for what it affords: access to 8.5 million songs. “I never understand the type of resistance we get sometimes over what is essentially such a low-cost item,” he said. “On a day-to-day basis, it’s probably less than a dollar a day.”
That’s not quite true for vineyards, which tend to offer music twice a week or so, and only during tourist seasons. But Candilora is unmoved when people lament about the struggles of the small-business person. His response: “You want to talk small-business person? Become a songwriter.”
Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 3, 2009
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