Joey's Seafood & Grill closes; NARS planning to expand

In the business blog Rude Awakenings last week, I had one of my most-commented items in recent weeks: the closing of Joey's Seafood & Grill. The entry included a note that the owners of the restaurant, Steve and Catherine Mills, have positions at the National Assets Recovery Services, or NARS, call center in Cape Girardeau.

Some who left comments predicted that the call center on William Street won't last much longer. Not only is that speculation wrong, but the company announced it is ready to expand its already impressive work force again as it celebrates its first anniversary here.

NARS was founded by Cape Girardeau native Chris Buehrle, and also operates call centers in St. Louis and offshore, with headquarters in St. Louis. The company began operations here a year ago with 97 employees and plans to hire up to 400.

As of last week, the company employed 507 people in Cape Girardeau and plans to add a net of 100 more employees during 2008, Buehrle said in an interview. He estimates total employment at the call center, which provides an on-site day care, workout facility and deli for it workers, could top 650.

I spoke with Buehrle while he was at a desk alongside his other employees in the call center. "I am looking out here now and I don't see many empty desks and it is really fantastic," Buehrle said. "We've got 50 people in training and next week we start another class of 50 people."

There are 620 desks in the call center, which operates 18 to 19 hours a day, Buehrle said. With part-time and full time employees sharing work stations, the estimate of going to 600 employees is conservative, he said.

"Sitting here in this chair with the agents surrounding me, I am reminiscing of when I sat here and sketched it out," he said. "It is really gratifying, not just for me, but for their families as well."

Buehrle acknowledged that turnover is an issue for the business, but he said there are good opportunities for people who want to move up with his company. "If you are good you won't be at entry level very long," he said. "Many people who started as agents are walking around with clipboards as supervisors," he said. "That's pretty good inside of one year."

• More on Joey's Seafood: The closing of Joey's Seafood & Grill, 155 Siemers Drive, killed owners Steve and Catherine Mills' plans for multiple locations of the Minnesota-based franchise eatery.

The restaurant, which opened in March 2006, never really caught on with the Cape Girardeau public, Steve Mills said. And as rising gas prices left the public with less disposable income, the struggle became too much, he said. "Every time gas would get to $3 a gallon, we would just be a ghost town."

The Millses, former owners of the Jackson Hewitt Tax Service in Cape Girardeau, had high hopes when they opened the Joey's franchise. They had already lined up rights to open franchises in Paducah, Ky., and Carbondale, Ill., but the lack of success in Cape Girardeau ended those plans. "We were hoping to open three or four of them," he said. "We just could never get this first one to pan out."

The entire chain, which amounted to about 19 restaurants, is going out of business, Mills said.

The cost of reorganizing the restaurant as an independent eatery was too high to consider an attempt to stay in business without the corporation's support, he said.

"Putting up new signage, new menus and things would have cost $20,000, $25,000," Mills said. "When you are not making money, it is hard to throw another $25,000 at it."

Joey's Seafood & Grill is the U.S. incarnation of Joey's Only Seafood, a Canadian restaurant chain. Brad Birnberg, chief operating officer of Joey's Seafood & Grill, wouldn't confirm that the company is closing its operations.

"We are going to have no comment," Birnberg said. "No comment is what we would like to say."

But Birnberg went on to add a few statements that indicate to me that the company is in trouble. "There is no benefit. It doesn't do him any good, or us any good," he said. "I assure you there has been a tremendous amount of pain on our end and there continues to be."

• Looking for a location: An area business specializing in granite countertops is searching for a location to set up a fabrication shop where customers can examine slabs of granite before they are cut to order.

Stuart Arthur, owner of Precision Granite & Marble, 1020 N. Kingshighway, started his business last year as a local outlet of a Paducah business with the same name. Arthur and Brent Maurer, owner of the Paducah company, decided to open a location in Cape Girardeau after attending the annual homebuilders show here last march, Arthur said.

"Because of the huge response, we opened a showroom," he said.

On Jan. 1, Arthur became the owner of the Cape Gir-ardeau store. The next step in building the business, he said, is to find a location for a "slab yard" where customers can do more than just look at samples. He hopes to find the location within a year and has already scoped out several possibilities. Once he's ready, he said, he'll need to hire 12 to 15 people to handle the increased business he expects.

The Cape Girardeau area, despite a slowdown in housing construction, is a fertile market for the quality look of granite, Arthur said. "This community is growing," he said. "A good majority of people can afford granite, they just don't realize it."

• New real estate brokerage: Licensed real estate broker Larry Brewer and his wife Gina Brewer, a licensed agent, will open a new office, Regal Real Estate, today in Jackson.

The former Century 21 broker decided it was time to open his own independent office after eight years in real estate and almost four years in the Cape Girardeau area.

The Brewers, both 47, have an education background, working in schools as sign language interpreters, and Gina Brewer continues to do that part-time. They have two children, a son, Anthony, at Southeast Missouri State University and a daughter, Rachel, attending Jackson High School.

As astute readers of this page know, I've been tracking a local real estate market that has cooled considerably, like the rest of the nation, since 2005. Larry Brewer said he sees signs of a turnaround.

"It always goes through cycles," he said. "This is another cycle, and this is something I have had in the back of my mind for a long time. We feel the market is improving, and we will hit the ground running, and we are in the prime time to get out there as an independent company."

• Dealership change: This past week, Crown Cadillac, owned by Gary Stanley, a partner in a Cape Girardeau CPA firm, was transferred to Mark Van Matre's family of dealerships. The acquisition is the second for Van Matre in the past year, as he also took over the Pontiac and GMC franchises.
• From the news release file: The holidays slowed the number of announcements I've been getting, but Cap America of Fredericktown, Mo., under the leadership of Bruce Watson of Cape Gir-ardeau as president and chief operating officer, reported a big increase in sales in 2007. The company, which specializes in embroidered caps, added two new production lines in 2007, increasing capacity by 33 percent, their announcement said. The production lines run 24 hours a day, six days a week.

~Rudi Keller is the business editor for the Southeast Missourian. Contact him at rkeller@semissourian.com or call 335-6611, extension 126