Among 25-year-olds, there are few who can say they have spent 13 years working in their chosen professions and probably fewer who co-own a business. But Chris Keefe, co-owner and general manager of The Mainstay Restaurant in Newport, proudly lays claim to both titles.
Keefe, originally from Middletown, bought the restaurant – which is located on the ground floor of the Best Western on Admiral Kalbfus Road – together with his father-in-law, Peter Krones, about a year ago.
Krones’ and Keefe’s history goes back to 1995, when Keefe was 12 and working at Tommy’s Diner in Middletown. Krones’ family had bought the diner in the late 1930s. By the time Keefe graduate from Middletown High School, he went to work full time there.
But the Krones family sold that diner in 2006. The buyer moved it by flatbed truck to Utah, where it’s now the Road Diner – and Keefe was out of a job. So Keefe went to work at The Mainstay in June 2006. He started as a waiter and within four months was made a manager.
A year and a half after starting at The Mainstay, he and Krones took over ownership. They kept the name and the look of the interior – aside from adding local art, which is for sale.
During the peak summer season, Keefe has a staff of about 20 people, including in-the-kitchen help and waitstaff, covering the 85-seat restaurant. During the winter, Keefe pares his staff to about eight employees, including his wife, Stacey Keefe, and spends much of his time tending the bar. The restaurant is open 20 hours a day every day – expect Christmas – with a 1 a.m. closing time. And because it’s in a hotel, it can sometimes get busy strange hours, Keefe said.
“In a regular restaurant, you can tell when your busy times are going to be,” Keefe said. “But in a hotel restaurant, you don’t know when you are going to get hit. You could get the whole hotel coming down at any time of the day.”
On a recent frigid, February day the breakfast crowd was big and the lunch crowd was slender.
“It all depends on the weather,” he said. “If you get a nice day, sometimes you get a rush of rooms, with people coming right off the [Newport] bridge and coming here.”
But there are days when Keefe and Krones expect to be busy, including St. Patrick’s Day, when the hotel is usually full with out-of-towners who have come to celebrate and watch the annual parade. Keefe said he is already stocked up on Guinness and expects to be packed from 11 a.m. straight through to 1 a.m. on the day of the parade.
And Keefe, who spends “a lot of time” at the restaurant, helps Krones – the lead chef – in the kitchen, but mostly just with breakfast. In an effort to make the restaurant more attractive to locals, Krones has revamped the menu. He, for example, cut the deli-style turkey sandwich from the menu and added a “real turkey” option. He makes the restaurant’s soups instead of using pre-made stuff. The restaurant no longer uses pre-cracked, processed eggs, opting instead to crack eggs themselves before the breakfast rush.
“Some of our food is now more homemade, because that’s the way Peter’s used to making food – he did a lot of home-style cooking before,” Keefe said. “He makes homemade meatloaf – stuff you would just find at your house. It’s little stuff like that that makes it homier.”
Adding Newport Storm beer to the menu turned out to be a hit with tourists. “Oh yeah,” Keefe said. “People love to try local brews when they travel. Tourists love that kind of stuff.”
The changes to the menu were also an attempt to increase the percent of The Mainstay’s business that comes from locals. Now only about 20 percent come from Newport and it’s tough to grow that percentage, Keefe said. “A lot of people don’t think to come to a hotel, but we do have a small local gathering,” he said. “At first, we didn’t do much local business, but from [our reputation] at the other restaurant, it’s starting to pick up.”
The restaurant also handles on-site catering for the hotel, which has a 200-person banquet hall and a smaller hall upstairs. “They do marketing for us and the marketing reps work with us when we bring in banquets and group tours,” Keefe said.
Keefe is also a father. He and his wife have a daughter, Ona, 2, and son, Kyle, 3 months.
“It’s tough running a restaurant and having time at home, but they come in here on my long days, which I have a lot of, and get to see me,” he said. “And my wife comes in” – looking at his watch – “she will be in in about an hour. So we get to see each other here. It’s all based around work.”
But it is stressful sometimes “and they understand that. Even my daughter, she knows that I work a lot,” Keefe said.
Keefe’s time is often spent solving problems and arranging things that, unlike his early days in the business, are left to him.
“You realize quickly that there’s more to a restaurant than you knew before. I’m paying bills. I’m running here and there, picking up things,” Keefe said, never breaking his smile. “And I realized that I’m the one – if something goes wrong, it all falls down on me. I can’t go get the manager anymore.” •
