THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608100082
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY REBECCA MYERS CUTCHINS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 188 lines
LAUREN SAWYER LEANS forward and pushes her 150-pound cooler on wheels, dodging tree limbs and puddles as she makes her way down the bricked walks of Olde Towne.
At the end of a sidewalk on PortCentre Parkway, she maneuvers awkwardly through the glass door of a Portsmouth Community Services Board office, then stops to pick up a microphone to the intercom system.
``Max on Wheels is in the lobby,'' she repeats twice.
She looks at the man at the front desk.
``Is Roy here? I have an onion bagel.''
After just one month on the job, Sawyer has gotten to know the names and the food favorites of dozens of downtown workers who flock to the cart for everything from apple fritters for breakfast to large salads topped with blackened spiced chicken for lunch.
``Some people try different things, but there are some who get the same thing every day,'' she said.
The Max restaurant started peddling its cuisine to downtown office buildings about 10 months ago.
Sawyer, a waitress there, decided to take one of the routes because she wanted the morning hours and the opportunity to get fresh air and exercise.
``The first time I did this, I felt fine and my legs weren't all that tired, but, gosh, the next morning when I woke up, I kind of got out of bed and dropped to my knees,'' said Sawyer.
She lost 15 pounds the first three weeks. But she also learned what it feels like to be popular.
``Most places are waiting for you, and they attack the cart when you get there,'' said the 20-year-old.
Sawyer is on the road by 9 a.m. every day, making a three-mile loop along County, Court and Crawford streets and as far down as the 300 block of PortCentre Parkway.
By the time she gets back to the waterfront restaurant, her cart has been picked clean of tuna hoagies, ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken salad croissants, pasta salads, macaroni and cheese, fresh fruit and breakfast biscuits that were stacked to the brim.
The drawers and bins on the side of the cart have been emptied of bagels, cookies, muffins, brownies, pretzels and apple crisps.
``We're sort of in the perfect location,'' said Charlie Sears of The Max at 425 Water St. ``We can roll right out of our kitchen, right down the ramp and right into the office buildings.''
``It's surely not an original idea by any stretch,'' said Sears, citing other local restaurants and catering companies that hawk their food door-to-door. ``The restaurant business is a nickel-dime business, and you've got to go in every direction you can to make it.''
Brutti's also sends a basket-toting vendor around with their bagels and baked goods each day.
While the concept appears to be commonplace in downtown Portsmouth, a National Restaurant Association spokesperson was not familiar with similar trends elsewhere.
``I think this is something quite cutting edge,'' said Jarad Smith, assistant media relations manager with the National Restaurant Association.
``In front of me right now, I have about 10 files of consumer food trends and delivery service trends and there's really nothing like that,'' he said in a telephone interview from his Washington, D.C., office.
Smith can see the concept working in smaller cities, he said, but not in larger metropolitan areas.
``In Washington, D.C., where all the buildings are 10 stories high and there's really no one at the front door except the security guard, it has a whole different dynamic,'' he said.
After being announced by the receptionist at Comp-U-Dose, Sawyer greets her customers in the company lunchroom.
``We love her to death,'' said Denise Barrett, a pharmacy technician.
``It's here that I get to take a break,'' said Sawyer, depositing 50 cents into a drink machine as 10 men and women rummage through her cooler.
Clutching an apple fritter, Barrett announces to the others: ``These are the best things you'll ever eat . . . but they go straight to my hips!''
Barrett bought one anyway.
Sawyer hits the road again. Someone evidently missed the announcement. A woman runs to catch up with Sawyer.
``Wait, wait,'' pleads Anita Griffin, a data processing supervisor with a craving for a ham biscuit.
Sawyer's most profitable stops are the Tri-Care and City Hall office buildings because ``there's a lot more people coming in and out,'' she explained.
The price tags in the portable restaurant start at $1 and go to about $4.50. Sawyer is paid by the hour and averages from $3 to $5 in tips each day - not much for someone who travels quite a few miles farther than the average waitress to serve a meal.
``One of the places I go has four doors that I have to go through and that's just at the entrance,'' said Sawyer, referring to one of the downtown law offices.
Another headache is having to go the long way around a building in order to get to a ramp in the sidewalk.
``It's kind of like being handicapped,'' said Sawyer, who occasionally has to stop to move tree limbs and garbage cans away from the sidewalk.
But it's the people that Sawyer likes most about her job.
One of her favorite stops is the clerks office at Circuit Court.
``They're the most fun because they greet you at the door,'' said Sawyer, ``and they're just so excited to see you.''
Sawyer has made a lot of new friends, including the other vendors who make their way through downtown streets these days.
Brutti's started toting its freshly baked bagels, muffins and BagelNUTZ (soft bagel dough with cream cheese baked inside) shortly after its opening in 1993.
``We used to have four or five route people going out, but there was a lot of cross-over,'' said Brutti's owner Charles Greenhood, ``so we honed it down to one route.''
With a basket full of freshly baked goods and a small cooler on wheels containing salads, route person Matthew Ellis hits the streets each morning at 8 a.m.
``We really never went after the lunch business, although people have asked for it,'' said Greenhood. ``It's really hard to make sandwiches at 6 or 7 in the morning and have them fresh at 12 noon.''
Over the years, Greenhood has left it up to his salespeople to decide which offices are kept on the route and which are dropped.
``They work on tips mostly and it's a situation where they have to make a business decision based on what kind of cash flow is generated for them,'' he said.
Occasionally, Brutti's will cross paths with The Max on Wheels. It happened last Friday at FamilyCare on Court Street.
``We're on friendly terms,'' said Sawyer. ``I call him Rutti and he calls me Max. We run into each other all the time.''
Another traveling salesman Sawyer and Ellis run into is Mike Daniels, a local distributor of Mountain Man Nut and Fruit Co. of Colorado.
``I buy from the Mountain Man,'' said Sawyer when she ran into Daniels last Friday in the lunchroom of Comp-U-Dose.
``And I buy from The Max,'' Daniels reciprocated.
For almost two years, Daniels has tooled a dolly containing 16-ounce bags of nuts, dried fruit and candy through offices in Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Suffolk.
A former route salesman for Frito Lay for 10 years, Daniels decided to try something different because he wanted to be his own boss.
``It's less hours and less stress,'' said Daniels, who works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and every other Saturday.
The most difficult part of Daniels' job has been the cold calling, he said.
``If you're in a building where it says `No Solicitation' and you're going in without having any customers in the building, that could be a problem,'' said Daniels, who has only once been denied access to a building.
Other than that, Daniels lets little else deter him. Bad weather doesn't bother him, nor do broken elevators.
``I've had to pull the cart upstairs when an elevator is out of order,'' he said. ``With the size cart that I have, it's not really much of a problem. You just sort of get used to wheeling it around.''
Daniels has been going to the same buildings for so long that he feels like part of the family in some offices.
``Sometimes you get to talking to people, and they'll tell you about what's going on in their lives,'' he said.
Daniels makes more stops in the Signet Bank high-rise downtown than he does in any other building, but the Police Department's detective bureau on County Street is probably one of his most profitable visits, he said.
As far as territories go, business is booming right now in Churchland, said Daniels, while those in the Greenbrier area of Chesapeake seem to be on a diet.
The length of Daniels' stay varies from office to office ``because every office has a different atmosphere,'' he said.
``I've been in a few offices where you can tell that the boss might not particularly like you being there,'' said Daniels, ``but the people in the office enjoy buying your product and sometimes it might cause a little tension. They might buy the stuff real quick and say `Goodbye.' ''
According to Daniels, the happier offices seem to be the smaller, family-run operations.
``But then again, most places get in a pretty good mood when they see the candy man coming,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos, including color photo on the cover, by
MARK MITCHELL
Lauren Sawyer, a waitress at The Max, decided to take one of the
cart routes because she wanted the morning hours and the opportunity
to get fresh air and exercise.
Food and money change hands quickly at the Max on Wheels when it
visits the Comp-U-Dose company.
Mike Daniels restocks his cart with Mountain Man nuts, dried fruit
and candies. Daniels delivers his wares to businesses in Portsmouth,
Chesapeake and Suffolk.
Leo Sharpe holds his office doors open for Lauren Sawyer to push her
150-pound Max on Wheels cooler inside. On the cover, she pauses
inside the lobby of an office building to check her inventory while
she waits for customers to appear. Her cart is loaded with tuna
hoagies, ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken salad croissants, pasta
salads, macaroni and cheese, fresh fruit and breakfast biscuits. But
not for long . . .
KEYWORDS: FOOD VENDOR by CNB