Tavern adds breakfast with Steve’s Place staff

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

The Tavern restaurant on Aviation Road in Queensbury has added breakfast six days a week — prepared and served by six former staffers at Steve’s Place, which closed in March as long-time owner Chris Vamvalis-Haley retired and sold the Steve’s property to Hoffman’s Carwash.

Four servers and two cooks from Steve’s joined The Tavern’s staff of 12, “give or take,” Tavern co-owner Matt Sokol said.

Casey Scherer was the connection. “She was a waitress at The Tavern when it first opened in 2011,” Mr. Sokol recalls. She left to go to nursing school, then became a server at Steve’s.

With Steve’s Place closing, “she approached me” about adding breakfast at The Tavern, Mr. Sokol said.

His reaction? “Heck, no!”

But he says Ms. Scherer was persuasive: “What if I told you we could bring over the cooks, we could bring over servers?” He reached out to co-owner John Horgan “that day. I was kind of excited.”

Mr. Horgan says, “I would never have been inclined to make this move if we weren’t able to get experienced breakfast people into our home here.”

Ms. Scherer tells The Chronicle she made the suggestion out of concern for her former customers. “I didn’t know where everyone was gonna go.”

So far, with only a soft opening, she said it’s not as busy as her staffmates are used to. She’s eager to get the word out: “We’re all ready for it. It feels like we’re holding back the thoroughbreds.”

“We’re still looking for dishwashers,” Mr. Sokol says. He says he finds himself regularly helping out with it too.

They retrofit and rearranged the kitchen and added equipment like a flat top grill. He terms it a “sizable” investment, in payroll, equipment and inventory.

“A lot of the equipment we did purchase from Steve’s, but we also bought new,” Mr. Sokol adds.

“Our lights weren’t on,” in the mornings, Mr. Horgan says. “Just to turn the lights on for these hours is good.

“My biggest concern was that transition between closing breakfast down and starting lunch up, and so far it’s been actually very good,” Mr. Horgan said.

They’ve rearranged the decidedly small kitchen to make room for lunch prep while breakfast is still being served. “That’s actually been good,” Mr. Sokol said.

The Tavern runs on a point-of-sale, POS computer system, while at Steve’s place, “they were doing all duplicate handwritten tickets, so it’s a big jump,” he says.

He said it’s a new way of communicating orders for everyone in the kitchen and the servers on the floor, all from Steve’s.

“That’s why we did go slow,” Mr. Horgan said. “You want to ease into it,…Let’s start with the positive, go small, and work our way into it.”

“We did a soft opening three weeks ago,” Mr. Sokol said. “We told our regular customers to stop in, we’re not going to charge you, just take care of the servers. You don’t want to go in with customers having a bad taste in their mouth. No pun.”

“We had a great Mother’s Day,” he said, adding that they’re learning to prepare for the after-church crowd on Sundays.

Mr. Sokol said they’ve brought menu items from Steve’s, like omelettes that regulars would be looking for, as well as creating new specials, like breakfast skillets and a breakfast flatbread topped with eggs and sausage — building off a signature Tavern lunch-dinner item.

Mr. Sokol says, “We’ve got a great location. We always have,” and they want to develop signature menu items. “Like for our lunch and dinners, our chefs make a lot of homemade products. Our corned beef hash is homemade. Muffins, the quiches, just like our sausage gravy.”

They plan to add a kid’s menu.

Mr. Sokol says the Tavern’s established staff — “Earl, Kendalyn and Tim in the kitchen, the serving staff and bartenders — and the new staff mesh well.

“You know, they had a family there [at Steve’s Place]. They brought the family over here.”

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