ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 26, 1996 TAG: 9610280006
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
IT LOOKED LIKE A SMART MOVE at the time, but Rosa Lanier has found that getting three times the seating has brought 10 times the trouble.
As Rosa Lanier has discovered, the world can be a harsh place if you make the wrong business decision, even if it's for the right reasons.
In the months since she moved Rosa's Family Restaurant from Vinton to Williamson Road in Roanoke, she has cashed in a life insurance policy and spent her 14-year-old daughter's college fund for renovation of a nearly 30-year-old building. She has filed for wage-earner reorganization, a form of bankruptcy. The bank repossessed her car, leaving her to sleep at the restaurant on nights when she can't get a ride home to Vinton.
And soon she may have to close.
When Lanier decided to transplant her popular restaurant late last year, it seemed a wise move. In the 21/2 years she had been dishing up Southern home-cooking, Rosa's had rapidly outgrown its tiny building.
But in her hurry to relocate, Lanier signed her new lease without having her attorney read it first, without asking independent contractors to inspect the building.
And she's been struggling to recover from that haste ever since. She had squirreled away money to cover costs of relocation, but not enough to cover unforeseen repairs to the roof and the heating and air-conditioning system and the food coolers.
Now, her landlord, Arthur Bernstein, a Troutville attorney, has said he will go before the bankruptcy judge Monday, seeking to reclaim the restaurant from Lanier because she hasn't paid rent. According to Lanier's bankruptcy file, she owes him $9,500 for back rent and utility payments.
Although Lanier's attorney, Malissa Lambert Giles, said she has objected to Bernstein's request and also will go before the judge Monday, she knows her client's fate is uncertain.
"Legally, you can't stay on a property without paying rent," Giles said. Lanier should have sought professional guidance - whether from an attorney or a business mentor - before signing the lease, she said. But Lanier didn't. "Rosa absolutely rushed into this decision."
"I'm not blaming anyone but myself," Lanier said. "I made a couple of bad choices. I know I'm too trusting."
But Lanier said she doesn't like to be bitter. Even as she turns the pages in the scrapbook that chronicles her struggles - photos of a hole in the ceiling, comments from customers driven away by the summer heat when the air conditioning wasn't working - she shifts the conversation away from her problems and talks about how her customers and staff have stood behind her.
The house band, for instance, has refused to take payment if they play to an empty house, she said.
Lone Wolves band member Harry Gaston said the band sees Lanier as a sister, or a mother.
"It seems if it's not one thing, it's another, trying to knock her down," he said. "If we have anything to do with it, we're going to help her fight her battles."
Lanier can't help but smile as she talks about Gaston, and about her bartender, Matthew Garrett, and about her staff.
"That's the reason we've got to hang in here," she said. "These people are counting on me. These people stood behind me. I cannot give up."
Lanier still opens the restaurant every morning, and she still dishes up the fried green tomatoes and baby back ribs and mashed potatoes that earned her a loyal following in Vinton. Just a few weeks ago, she opened the Starlite Lounge in the back room of the restaurant. The lounge has brought in a fairly steady stream of patrons to listen to local bands.
"We have managed to stay above water, and it's 100 percent because of the customers and the employees," Lanier said.
And, doubtless, because of Lanier's survival instinct. She grew up in the coalfields of far Southwest Virginia, in a family of 11 kids. Early on, she learned to cook simple, hearty food, and she learned to cook lots of it.
She spent six years on the road as an estate planner, working as an independent agent for several insurance companies and helping employers set up retirement plans.
She left the business because she was on the road too much and rarely got to see her daughter, Lisa. While she was traveling, she made the discovery that led her back to cooking: It's hard to find good, inexpensive food when you're away from home.
She opened Rosa's Family Restaurant in March 1993 in a former gas station on East Washington Avenue in Vinton. The station's old oil bay was turned into her dining room. As word of the restaurant spread, it became harder for Lanier to accommodate her customers in a dining room that seated only 48 people.
She decided she had to move to a larger building. She looked all over the Roanoke Valley but found nothing that suited her needs. Finally, she heard about the building on Williamson Road. The site had been a restaurant for years: first a Village Inn, later Paulo's, then Arturo's. It would give her room to seat 150.
"We looked at all kinds of places. But when we drove in that parking lot -'' she pointed out the window, ``- I felt like I belonged."
She visited the building five or six times with friends and her accountant. The utilities weren't turned on, so she couldn't check the lighting or the gas or the air conditioning. She could tell the place was dirty, but that didn't bother her, she said. She could clean it.
The surprises came later, after the lease was signed and she was legally bound to the building.
Bernstein said he told Lanier that the previous tenants hadn't left the building in very good shape, and she had plenty of time to inspect the place before signing the lease. He even made concessions in the lease to cover some of the problems, he said. Bernstein made "concerted efforts" to address the repair problems, said his attorney, Andrew Goldstein.
Lanier is leaving the legal wranglings to her attorney. But she said her creditors - who, in addition to Bernstein, include Roanoke Restaurant Service Inc., Kessler Refrigeration Service Inc. and several employees - will be paid; she and the trustee handling the bankruptcy have worked out a repayment schedule.
She can't help but believe she'll emerge from her financial quagmire, she said. Too much has gone right for her to lose hope.
"Knowing our potential this is so temporary and this is so tiny," Lanier said. "I know what we're capable of."
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. 1. Rosa Lanier made a big jumpby CNBwhen she moved her popular restaurant from its 48-seat spot in
Vinton to this 150-seat building on Williamson Road in Roanoke.
Problems with the roof, the heating and air-conditioning system and
the food coolers have pushed her to her financial limits - and
beyond. color. 2. Rosa can accommodate more customers in her new
location, but it's also filled with problems.