The Olive Branch is moving. After about six years in the original location at 28A York Street in Sackville, I'm moving the restaurant around the corner to 96 Main Street. I've wanted to expand for some time, but opportunities in our current building have been limited, and I was unable to purchase that building outright. The restaurant's dining room space has been one of its biggest weaknesses for years - it's been too small during peak periods, with a cold and uneven floor, and with poor lighting, sound, and ambiance. Last month I decided that I had three options: to wait for an opportunity to expand in the York Street location, to find a new space in town, or to close outright. After several weeks of deliberations, I decided that the restaurant had too much potential opportunity to close, and I decided this past weekend to move into a larger facility.
The chance to finally have the kind of dining room space that I've always wanted is very exciting. I've always considered the Olive Branch to be a "work in progress" rather than a mature business, and over the past few years, my focus has been on areas which I had some control over, ie. the menus, marketing, making operations more efficient, and basically trying to make the business run smoothly as a small and lean organization. Although there are still improvements to be made in all of those areas, I have been mainly happy with our accomplishments to date. However, the chance to finally have a large venue is going to turn the restaurant into a much more impressive dining destination in our region. This blog will give me an opportunity to provide regular progress updates to the staff, our families and friends, and our well-wishers in the southeastern New Brunswick region. I hope to make almost daily updates to this blog over the coming six to seven weeks, as we wind down operations in the York Street location and start operations in the Main Street location.
So far this week, there hasn't been a lot to talk about. My restaurant manager (Alison Starratt) visited the Main Street facility with me several times early in the week. We moved in a bunch of tools, tried some sample paints on the walls to pick a color scheme, and walked around and started to make some tentative plans. We taped up the front windows so we wouldn't have so many curious onlookers, and started to paint. In the past two nights, we've had help from people like Kasie Morris, Cathy Cowe, Shawn Calhoun, Pippa Elliot, Sarah Milligan, Amanda Purdy, and Jeff Coull. Shawn especially is proving to be invaluable since he's got a lot of painting experience, and he isn't taking courses (almost all of our other helpers are students at Mount Allison University, so with exams coming up in two weeks, a lot of our potential helpers have to worry about academics). We've got one section of the dining room almost completely painted (so we could get a better feel for the color scheme) and the primer has been finished on about 50% of the entire dining area. We're concentrating on that before we start to worry about the kitchens, since we can't start moving equipment into the kitchens yet anyway. Also, the former color scheme in the dining room is pretty scary, so we want to cover up the bright reds, yellows, and oranges with a more conservative and tasteful beige/brown scheme.
My goal is to have all of the painting finished by November 30th. We have several Christmas banquets booked in the old restaurant during the first week of December, but we will probably be open to the public until about December 7th in the York Street location. After that, our goal is to have all of our equipment moved into the new location in the following two weeks, so we will have vacated the York Street location by Christmas.
As mentioned, I'll try to make regular posts on this blog, to keep everyone informed of our progress. Consider this to be our "Restaurant Makeover" blog!
- Jonathan (Scooter) Clark, owner/operator
The Olive Branch of Sackville
