Cole's Chophouse

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Coles Chop House is my second restaurant we opened my wife and i opened Cole Chop House
in the year 2000
in 1996
i opened a small restaurant called Celadon
very
tiny thousand-square-foot place
we were able to open with a shoestring we were able to work with a
small local bank
to get a very small loan after we begged and pleaded
i think thirty thousand dollars uh...
uh... open this little thousand-square-foot restaurant
Celadon had been open for three years and was doing well getting some good
national attention we were busy, we were profitable which you know for any
restaurant is always a good deal
and a space became available this space, the space that we're in
became available in 1999
started looking at it - i came in actually when this building was a shell still
going though a demolition phase and i walked in here and i just knew that this would
be a great steak house and i just walked in here
and i thought this place needs to be a steakhouse then i thought you know if i don't do something
now it's going to be...
the longer you wait the harder it is going to be
never to late to start a business
the bar that's behind us uh...
i found at a restaurant auction
when we opened Celadon and when we were preparing for Cole's
the restaurant auctions in San Francisco and all around the country are good places to
go
to find used equipment
sometimes uh... sometimes it's junk sometimes you find some really great things
and the bar had been built for a restaurant in san francisco
never went in and was never used it sat in a storage unit fifteen years
it's honduran mahogany
hand made it absolutely beautiful
i got it for twelve thousand dollars
i bought the bar - we had already signed the lease we working on the design
of the restaurant
uh... we knew that we were going to have a bar
we didn't quite know what kind of bar or were it was going to be
i saw this bar and said that's it
that's where we'll start our design from so i i bought the bar maxed out
my credit card
maxed out a friend of mine's credit card who happened to be with me that day
loaded it up and brought it to napa and when we were building the place
we moved the bar in here
so that the architect
could get a feel for where the bar would be uh... and
how it would look
from there the design of the whole restaurant kind of evolved around
around this original bar
it's beautiful it's a gorgeous bar
it was a big project this is a four thousand square foot restaurant it was a
it was ground-up builds uh... Celadon was a remodel it had been a restaurant so
we were able to do some modifications
coat of paint couple piece of equipment that was easy here was a different story
here it was a shell
needed some serious fine we needed some money we we had a little bit of savings
that we had generated from Celadon
really what we had from Celadon was we had a little bit of a track record
like i said when we opened Celadon going to a bank they sort of just laughed at us
you guys are cute but you know that the restaurant business has one of the highest
failure rates
of just about any business in the nation
so uhm...
put in a lot of your own money maybe we'll loan you a little bit of money
as we see this project coming together
here was a complete thing we need to borrow in excess of a half million dollars we didn't have that!
uh... one of our local bankers of someone who was a customer and
had become a friend
who was interested in us and was interested in talking to us although
his bank wouldn't aprove our loan
you know who you need to talk to?! there's a group out Santa Rosa called SAFE-BIDCO
SAFE-BIDCO is a group that you can work with they could help you through
the process of getting a loan size because
really a traditional banks not gonna be there for you not for a resaurant not for
what's really a startup restaurant
even though you're established a little bit
so we uhm
started working with SAFE-BIDCO
we had a business plan we had all of our ducks in a row we had some experience we
had
launched a restaurant just three years before but this was a big
undertaking
and so we worked through SAFE-BIDCO and
through the loan process we were able to
get a loan that we needed to get this thing open and that was twelve years ago
so we're still here
and our loan is payed off
My name is Greg Cole i'm the cheff and owner of Cole's Chop House and also Celadon
restaurant
both in downtown Napa
Cole's Chow House is at 1122 main street between first and pearl
in historic down town Napa
the building we're in was built in 1886
it's localy quarried stone it's beautiful douglas-fir floors
it an amazing space it really is just to walk-in
just to see this restaurant it's absolutely beautiful!