ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 6, 1996 TAG: 9608060077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
PARLOR DAYS restaurant, located on Roanoke's Day Avenue, has reopened, boasting ice cream concoctions such as "Dead End Delight.''
Rick and Erin Mardian didn't know where their new path would take them after they closed their Parlor Days restaurant and ice cream shop on Roanoke's Day Avenue in early 1995.
After 13 years of effort, they were feeling a bit fed up.
Business had been good until late 1991, when construction crews began widening nearby Franklin Road. That first day, the Mardians' revenue fell by half. Even after the job was finished, sales stayed one-third below previous levels.
The road project had turned their street into a dead end, and their enterprise began to seem like one, too.
"We lost our to-go business, which never came back," Erin says.
"We got a little depressed," Rick says.
So they shut the door and went shopping among sites in the county, thinking Erin might open a sandwich shop. Rick, meanwhile, went back to selling medical supplies, a job he had left when they opened on Day. He spent 12-hour days in a van, traveling 2,000 miles per week.
Within seven months, the Mardians realized life was trying to tell them something: Go home.
They were more than ready to, by then.
Erin says the sites she saw in the county couldn't compare with the visibility of the Day Avenue spot, especially after nearby buildings were demolished for the road work.
Rick says, "I really found out how much I didn't like that other job" - something he had forgotten with the passage of so much time.
Last January, they went to work on the wheat-colored, two-story house they had closed, adding a brick patio with colorful umbrellas over new concrete tables and benches; air-conditioning the non-public rooms upstairs with the aim of leasing them as office space; and renovating the restaurant's interior.
They fine-tuned their menu and re-emphasized their homemade ice cream, jocularly adding a new sundae dubbed the Dead End Delight.
In late June, they reopened, with longer hours (11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily through Labor Day). Combined with the prep work, the new schedule gives them 90-hour weeks. But that's OK, because they're home.
As ever, their customers come largely from nearby buildings and businesses - from First Baptist Church, the Poff Federal Building, American Electric Power, medical clinics, law offices and other spots. They see a remarkable number of out-of-staters, who stop in for ice cream and invariably seek directions to Roanoke's City Market.
Quite a few workers from federal court offices drop in, too. Historically, the Mardians have served some notable defendants with reporters in tow.
"The TV people have been pretty good," Rick says. "They stop pretty much at the porch."
When he and Erin left, their morale was "pretty bad," he says. "As a small business, we really didn't have enough money to advertise in the way you should to get the people back."
For a time, he tortured himself for not realizing how low the business would go.
Eventually, they decided to turn a negative into a positive, lemons into lemonade, the parlor they had closed into the parlor they would reopen.
They are back, offering, among other things, their best-selling chicken and tuna salad sandwiches and 30 to 40 gallons of fresh ice cream per week. They have their own business again, and an upbeat outlook to go with it.
"We will become known as the Place at the Dead End," Erin says, cheerfully.
For five years, when son Jason and daughter Rachel were young, they lived upstairs, shivering through drafty winters, sweltering in the summer heat, working like crazy to make the thing succeed.
The Mardians live elsewhere now, but they still regard the parlor as home.
"The nicest thing is the people who've told us how much they've missed us," Erin says.
They've seen customers' children mature and return with children of their own. They've seen business deals get done, friendships form and romances blossom at their four-person tables.
"We've seen engagements here," Rick says. "I swear one girl got engaged and divorced here, both."
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART Staff. Rick and Erin Mardian are back inby CNBbusiness at Parlor Days. The Mardians closed the restaurant for 18
months after the Franklin Road project dead-ended Day Avenue and
left only Third Street as an access to their eatery. color.