Brunswick restaurateur Mike Jerome sees ideas for restaurants wherever he turns

Devote a working day with Brunswick restaurateur Mike Jerome, and you under no circumstances know where by you will finish up or what new thoughts will percolate.

You may uncover him performing on glitchy electrical outlets. When a microwave at Fats Boy Drive-In, the historic hamburger shack he acquired in 2020, was shorting out the complete location lately, he and his team problem-solved to preset it.

You could see him managing his personnel of 60 or so. He appears to know most people by name and on a latest June working day as he went from restaurant to cafe – Unwanted fat Boy, Tex-Mex bar and candlepin lanes Bolos, and new brunch location Flip – he greeted his staff members individually, not only talking with them about toilet locks and team scheduling, but also bantering about their outfits and their family members.

He could be predicting the temperature. If it’s great weather conditions, he’s discovered to be expecting crowds at the seasonal Extra fat Boy. If it is lousy temperature, it could be Bolos that needs to workers up.

Or he may well be referencing his newest Pinterest discoveries. 

“I imagine we should really get lights like this,” Jerome explained with enthusiasm at a modern Monday morning assembly of his corporation, Jerome Inc. He held up his smartphone to show his senior administration team a image of a ballroom stuffed with Edison light-weight bulbs and huge white lanterns.

Sabrina Cooper, 20, carries out an purchase at Body fat Boy Push-In. Derek Davis/Workers Photographer

“Yeah, for the reason that that’s what you found on your Pinterest very last evening, huh?” Chief Functioning Officer Samantha Moore teased him.

“Well … indeed.”

Jerome typically wears an enthusiastic grin and gestures energetically. Just a minute into talking to him, it is very clear his brain is moving a mile a moment, chock-total of suggestions that are itching to be introduced to lifestyle. He’s an concepts gentleman, in accordance to those who operate for him.

He reported he came to Brunswick for the local community, and he’s continuously brainstorming new ways to enhance it, mainly by developing new firms and building them excellent locations for his staff to function. When he sought a liquor license for Bolos, he advised town councilors he desired to develop more than just a bar. His fascination lay, he said, in “building one more neighborhood collecting place.”

His dining places in the local community of Brunswick are a varied group. That is mainly because, he explained, he doesn’t want to compete with himself, and also it retains life exciting. Prior ventures consist of Portland Pie Company in Brunswick and Kamasouptra in Portland, a soup business enterprise he started off with his siblings nearly 15 decades back. (They closed the organization in 2021.)

“He has rehabbed some pretty important areas in the neighborhood,” Brunswick Town Councilor Dan Ankeles stated about Jerome. “A great deal of folks in the group had been fearful that a pretty historical Brunswick institution (Fat Boy) would go underneath and just disappear. I definitely enjoy that a neighborhood individual has place so a lot time and sources in to hold in what is great about Brunswick there.”

Mike Jerome operates the grill at Excess fat Boy Drive-In, just one of the 3 places to eat that he owns. Derek Davis/Employees Photographer

THE Highway TO RESTAURATEUR

Jerome grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland his father is Scottish, his mom is American. His to start with career in the foodstuff business was making pizzas at a Pizza Hut in Edinburgh. At 16, he came to the United States for boarding university. He went on to research biology at college in the states, with strategies to go to healthcare college. But midway through college, Jerome understood he didn’t want to be a health practitioner. He give up school and moved again to Edinburgh.

There, Jerome discovered a position at the Difficult Rock Cafe, “attracted to the vivid lights, substantial employees and speedy-paced ecosystem,” as very well as the restaurant’s relationship to the United States. “It was awesome,” he remembers right now. “It was just kind of this revolving door of younger tourists from all above the environment.” He fell in really like with the food stuff marketplace although doing work there, getting himself in particular drawn to the closeness and collaboration of his cafe “family.”

Soon after two a long time, Jerome moved back again to the United States, and inevitably enrolled in cooking faculty in Texas. He was not intrigued in cooking as a vocation, for each se, but he knew by then he required to operate his individual eating places, and he hoped his education would a single day help him do so.

“I preferred to make certain that if one thing happened to the bartender that I could bounce back there and assistance, and if one thing transpired in the kitchen then I could bounce back there and help,” Jerome said, “and it would constantly be a seamless changeover.”

Immediately after graduation, he moved to Portland, drained of the Texas warmth. He’d been struck by Portland’s beauty when he’d frequented the city to attend a wedding ceremony. His very first career in Maine, as a shift supervisor for Portland Pie Firm in Scarborough, taught him far more administration and business enterprise skills, he reported, and his bosses “helped me form of navigate the waters of starting up a new business enterprise.”

Jerome’s to start with go at possession started as a family work. In 2009, he and two siblings, took out a micro-loan from the city of Portland to start off Kamasouptra, which bought an array of residence-designed soups at the Portland Public Industry and then afterwards at the food items courtroom in Freeport. (His professional daily life continues to be a household affair. His dad, Mel Jerome, operates as the amenities and servicing supervisor at Jerome Inc.)

Not extensive following the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade, Jerome posted this signal at his Fats Boy Travel-In in Brunswick. He has four daughters. Derek Davis/Personnel Photographer

Creating A Property IN BRUNSWICK

In 2013, Jerome and his household moved to Brunswick. The relatives was captivated to the town for the great university method – he had two daughters at the time (later on, he had a 3rd daughter and now he has a toddler with his new wife) – and for the local community itself. Early on, while, he was astounded to uncover that Brunswick had no whole-company, dine-in pizza cafe. He arrived at out to his previous employers at Portland Pie Firm about it. Though they weren’t intrigued in opening a locale in Brunswick on their own, they gave Jerome the eco-friendly light-weight to license the brand name and do it himself.

He opened the Brunswick site in January 2016, and the small business flourished. Some five yrs afterwards, he offered it. “It was time,” he stated simply. The very last few years have witnessed a flurry of business enterprise activity for Jerome. In some respects, he resembles a Brunswick Mister Monopoly. He owns this, this and this, obtained then, then and then. In 2018, he began leasing the house on Dunlap Road that would come to be Bolos. In 2020, all through the top of the pandemic, he took above the beloved Body fat Boy, and immediately after that, Bench Warmers, a bar on the corner of Maine Avenue and Station Avenue. 

Obtaining Fats Boy Travel-In as COVID-19 raged was a risky transfer. He was anxious, but a buddy in the small business reassured him. The generate-in, she informed him, was tailormade for social distancing. Customers in no way enter Unwanted fat Boy their get is introduced to their car.

” ‘Fat Boy’s is the only thing that can be open the way it really should be and the way it usually has been,’ ” Jerome mentioned the close friend told him. ” ‘People are going to flock there for the reason that it’s the only location that’s a typical encounter suitable now.’ And she was right.”

Fat Boy Push-In in Brunswick, a person of the 3 eating places owned by Mike Jerome. Mike’s daughter Eira, 12, places with each other an get at the cafe on Wednesday. Derek Davis/Staff members Photographer

As for Bench Warmers, he ran the bar for 8 months underneath the identify Bench, then used a 12 months transforming the place, and changing it into anything entirely new – Flip Breakfast. He did so to fill one more hole in the market place he’d recognized: Maine Avenue lacked a sit-down brunch spot with a common menu. Inside of, he transformed the darkish house with turquoise paint and a pink neon signal, amongst other alterations. Outside, he additional a brightly coloured signal the shape of an egg.

Now, one more Jerome restaurant conversion is afoot: Bolos is becoming transformed this thirty day period. It will reopen as Bolos Burger Bar, and, maintain on to your bowling sneakers, the candlepin lanes will be gone. Jerome is aware that’ll make some aged-timers disappointed.

“When obtaining The Bowling Bowl in 2019, our preferred part about the developing was the nostalgic sense, background, and candlepin lanes where so lots of memories were being manufactured,” the web site suggests. Sad to say, it went onto say, “each year it gets more challenging to keep, fix, and substitute elements that are basically non-existent except personalized developed. We comprehend this could be upsetting, an stop to an period, but we can assure our clients that Bolos will carry on to be a enjoyment, safe and sound space for events and amusement.”

Jerome is introducing an enjoyment room for performances and gatherings, and including regular video games like corn hole, darts and croquet. 

Jerome’s newest venture is for the spot that used to be My Tie bar on Maine Road. He not long ago started leasing the room and programs to transform the basement bar and operate room into offices for Jerome Inc., as effectively as a rental house for personal situations, and it’s possible, he says – and you can virtually see the wheels turning in his head as he implies it – a membership beer club?

These days, it’s possible to take in breakfast, lunch and evening meal – not to point out have a drink or participate in a sport – at a distinctive Jerome enterprise in Brunswick with no at any time straying out of city, or even all that significantly from Maine Street. 

Sabrina Cooper, 20, carries out an purchase at Excess fat Boy Travel-In on a late June working day. Jerome has some 60 workers. Derek Davis/Team Photographer

Employees Gratification

For Jerome, employees is uppermost. Jobs must assistance life, he mentioned, not the other way all over.

“I want (workforce) to walk in and say to me, ‘Mike, occur glance at my new vehicle.’ And to know that the achievements of the cafe thought that I began, that they had a large hand in producing prosperous and holding successful, afforded them to obtain that new vehicle.”

Bowdoin Faculty junior Libby Boutin has labored for Jerome due to the fact she was 15, when she commenced as a host at Portland Pie. She’s considering the fact that labored as a server, bartender and supervisor. This summer, Jerome produced a paid internship just for her, which brings together event preparing, controlling Fat Boy, and shadowing the company’s main running officer.

Boutin said what started out out as a put to operate challenging and make income swiftly has turned significantly additional to her. She explained Jerome as her unofficial school counselor (he wrote her letter of advice to Bowdoin), cheerleader and mentor. “He genuinely wanted to see me realize success a large amount, which was amazing,” Boutin explained.

Boutin is selected the abilities she’s obtained operating for Jerome — this sort of as collaborating with companions, working a enterprise, and preparing and operating situations — will appear in useful no subject what profession she goes into.

For Jerome, generating a great functioning lifestyle is crucial. Income, he thinks, will stick to. That belief has guided his company in a significant way. He explained he opened Flip in component to give managers Shawn Russell and Celeste Thibeault, who beforehand labored for him at Portland Pie and Unwanted fat Boy, incentive to remain with Jerome Inc. nevertheless be able to learn and grow. 

“It’s great to have locally based small business homeowners that reinvest in the group and put down roots in this article and set in a commitment to us,” Ankeles said. “We want far more of that, so I cannot wait around to see what he does next.”

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