Arts & Literature

Local Author lifts the curtain to “The Business Side of Restaurants” in new book

Published

3 years ago

August 12, 2021

In Cliff Bramble’s new book, readers can learn about the real-life facts of owning or operating a restaurant. Based on real-life stories and events, his book teaches essential lessons on the industry’s business side.

When Covid-19 forced the closing of Cliff Bramble’s restaurant, he strategized and thought about how he could use his decades of restaurant experience to help others. First, hoping he could maintain some normalcy within local residences, he handed out thousands of pounds of rosemary dough to his local customers. Then, he created online ordering and curbside pickup of essential items like eggs, milk, and cleaning products. Finally, for the eight weeks of being closed, he paid his employees their full pay.

Upon re-opening the restaurant, it was clear the large parties that took up 40% of his business had already moved out of the local business parks and started working from their homes. With no sales and no help from the landlord, he closed his multi-million-dollar restaurant. Adapting to the change, Cliff set out to help others in the restaurant business. This is what inspired The Business Side of Restaurants.

Cliff says, “If future generations of restaurant professionals can learn faster and less expensive, it is great for them, and the entire restaurant industry.”

The book begins with discussions on contracts like the lease, operating agreements, term sheets, and the general contractor. Next, it discusses operational costs like marketing, insurance, accounting, financial reporting, and restaurant design. The middle of the book discusses areas of analysis like sales percentages, financial analysis, human resources, sales mixes, costs, and inventory. The last part of the book is an analysis of areas that can suck a business dry. Topics like poor sales, labor, theft, cost of goods, and payroll.

Also, inside the book are real-life restaurant stories. Stories like a valet attendant jumping into a car’s passenger window or a Mercedes Benz being taken by the wrong guest. Within the pages, QR codes bring the book to life and make the reader active by linking them to websites, forms, examples, and chapter introductions by the author.

It is a reliable book of business facts that can help entrepreneurs, hospitality students, small businesses, restaurant owners, and anyone wanting to learn about the restaurant business. It is precisely what is needed in 2021, inspiration and knowledge for the entire industry.

Up Next

The Karate Kids

Don't Miss

Peachtree Corners Photography Club Monthly Meeting- August

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Around Atlanta

The High Museum to Showcase “Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind”

Published

1 week ago

December 12, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Oil on paper artwork by Terry Winters. A large red circle with smaller blue circles on top of it and gold/yellow accents. All of it on a dark brown background.

The special exhibition of the Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will run January 17 through May 25, 2025

In the mid-1970s, artist and Georgia State University professor Medford Johnston, along with his wife and collaborator Loraine, began collecting works by artists who were in the vanguard of contemporary art. Today, they hold one of the finest collections of postwar American drawings and related objects of its kind, now numbering more than 85 works.

In 2025, the High Museum of Art will present Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection, featuring their collected works, which is a promised gift to the museum. Featuring artists such as Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Al Taylor, Anne Truitt, Stanley Whitney and Terry Winters, among others, the exhibition will demonstrate how establishing the parameters of an art collection requires infinite patience, focus, discipline and a keen eye.

“The Johnstons have been friends of the High for a very long time. They’ve also built an impressive collection featuring works by many of the 20th century’s most significant abstract artists,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “We are honored that they have promised to leave their collection to the Museum where it will be preserved for future generations — and we are delighted that they are sharing it with our audiences now, hopefully inspiring the next generation of art collectors and supporters.”

A curated collection

The Johnstons’ story is a testament to, in the words of the High’s Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Michael Rooks, “knowing the difference between what is right and what is almost right” when building a collection.

Although the Johnstons acquired several paintings and objects when they first began collecting in 1972, they quickly narrowed their focus to drawing, primarily by artists working on the frontlines of abstraction in the mid-1960s during a time of great innovation and experimentation.

Ink drawing by Anne Truitt, rectangular lines and shapes made with black ink on off-white background — Anne Truitt (American, born 1921), *Ink Drawing ’59 [11]*, 1959, ink on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Estate of Anne Truitt / The Bridgeman Art Library / Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Rooks added, “Med and Loraine’s collection struck me at once by its single-minded focus on a specific moment in time, which was essentially the time of their contemporaries. The artists in their collection are like close friends to the Johnstons — in fact many are or were. What is equally astonishing about the collection is the Johnstons’ dogged pursuit of quality. Their in-depth knowledge of each artist’s practice combined with their understanding of specific qualities to look for — or more appropriately, to hold out for — will be a revelation to emerging collectors.”

The Johnstons have built their collection with the High in mind as the benefactor of their passion and discernment. For them, their collection “is a labor of love, pursued over more than 50 years, and we are delighted to be able to help the High Museum document and celebrate these important artists working during the same decades as our lives.”

About the exhibit

Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will be presented in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the second level of the High’s Stent Family Wing.

The exhibit is organized by the High Museum of Art and made possible through the generosity of sponsors:

Premier Exhibition Series Sponsor Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Premier Exhibition Series Supporters Mr. Joseph H. Boland, Jr., The Fay S. and W. Barrett Howell Family Foundation, Harry Norman Realtors and wish Foundation
Benefactor Exhibition Series Supporters Robin and Hilton Howell
Ambassador Exhibition Series Supporters Loomis Charitable Foundation and Mrs. Harriet H. Warren
Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters Farideh and Al Azadi, Mary and Neil Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones, Megan and Garrett Langley, Margot and Danny McCaul, Wade A. Rakes II and Nicholas Miller and Belinda Stanley-Majors and Dwayne Majors.

Support has also been provided by the Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund, Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund, Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund, RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund and USI Insurance Services.

About the High Museum of Art

Located in the heart of Atlanta, the High Museum of Art connects with audiences from across the Southeast and around the world through its distinguished collection, dynamic schedule of special exhibitions and engaging community-focused programs.

Housed within facilities designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Richard Meier and Renzo Piano, the High features a collection of more than 19,000 works of art, including an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American fine and decorative arts; major holdings of photography and folk and self-taught work, especially that of artists from the American South; burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, including paintings, sculpture, new media and design; a growing collection of African art, with work dating from prehistory through the present; and significant holdings of European paintings and works on paper.

The High is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of its communities and offering a variety of exhibitions and educational programs that engage visitors with the world of art, the lives of artists and the creative process.

For more information about the High or to purchase tickets, visit high.org.

Top image: (from the collection) Terry Winters (American, born 1949), Orb, 2020, oil on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Terry Winters, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Around Atlanta

City Springs Theatre Company Presents the Hit Musical Jersey Boys

Published

6 months ago

July 3, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

The megahit musical Jersey Boys is making its regional premiere with the City Springs Theatre Company in a five-week run.

The megahit musical Jersey Boys makes its regional premiere in City Springs Theatre Company’s (CSTC) first-ever, five-week run at the Byers Theatre in Sandy Springs.

Directed by Atlanta’s-own Shane DeLancey, and choreographed by Meg Gillentine, Jersey Boys tells the rags-to-riches story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. The show details their remarkable journey from the streets to the top of the charts, to their 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Leading the cast of Jersey Boys is Haden Rider as Frankie Valli. Rider is a City Springs Theatre Company veteran, with recent roles in both Legally Blonde (Emmett) and Fiddler on the Roof (Perchik).

Presented by Resurgens Spine Center, Jersey Boys runs from July 12 through August 11, and shines a special spotlight on home-grown talent, as the show’s four leading men are all Atlanta-area residents.

With phenomenal music, memorable characters and great storytelling, Jersey Boys follows the fascinating evolution of four blue-collar kids who became one of the greatest successes in pop-music history.

“City Springs Theatre Company is very proud to be the first in the southeast region to present Jersey Boys,” said CSTC Artistic Director and Tony Award-winner Shuler Hensley. “Our audiences have been asking for this particular show since we opened. The production is truly stacked with talent onstage and off, and we’re pulling out all the stops to bring audiences an experience that will rival any previous version of the show.”

Jersey Boys premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2005, prior to its 13-year Broadway run, from 2005 to 2017. There have been productions of the show in Las Vegas, UK/Ireland, Toronto, Melbourne, Singapore, South Africa, the Netherlands, Japan, Dubai and China.

Jersey Boys features a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, and lyrics by Bob Crewe.

Individual tickets to see Jersey Boys are on sale now ($42 – $108), with discounts for seniors, students, groups and active and retired military personnel.

CSTC’s Box Office is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Call 404-477-4365 or visit CitySpringsTheatre.com for more information.

This production contains adult language and is recommended for mature audiences.

Performance schedule:

Arts & Literature

Local Students Show Off Their Artistic Creations

Published

7 months ago

June 2, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Courtney Escorza, Colleen Nikopour, Laura Hwang, Jennifer Jackson, Norcross. Laura ELizabeth Martin, Payton Hirschmann, Paul Duke HS

From May 11 through May 18, the Norcross Gallery & Studios kicked off a fantastic exhibition, Reflections at Rectory, which showcased the works of 36 rising stars: AP and IB art students from our local high schools.

The opening reception celebrated their creativity and dedication. Gallery director Anne Hall presented a dozen awards generously sponsored by the community, a testament to the local support for these young artists.

One prestigious award, the Terri Enfield Memorial Award, holds special significance.

Established by Terri’s daughters, it recognizes not just artistic excellence, but also leadership, work ethic and the spirit of collaboration. Last year’s winner, Aidan Ventimiglia, even played a part in selecting this year’s recipient Jasmine Rodriguez.