Would you buy licorice from this animal?

 

THE MARTEN

“The marten lives in the woods of northern Canada.  It is unique in all the animal kingdom in that its gums are black.”

 

How would you rate the preceding as a headline?   Not a real headline, the advertising kind.  Would you slow down to read it on a billboard? Or would you drive by without giving it a second glance?

 

Secondarily, would it make you consider purchasing Panda Brand soft licorice?

 

“If I saw that on a billboard, Trey, I would definitely slow down. Maybe stop and take a picture.”

“Tuey,” the young person corrected me.  “My name’s Tuey. Did you think I was a guy?” 

 

I moved my finger across the top of the application in front of me. The name clearly said, “Trey Jordan III.”  I recalled our newly hired seating hostess, Lynda, telling me that a kid had filled out an application for bar boy/copywriter, but she didn’t think he was 21. You must be 21 to work where they serve liquor in Minnesota.

 

“Tuey.  My mistake, I was actually reading from another application; we’ve had so many.  Did you say you knew InDesign, Tuey?”

 

Asking people interviewing for positions as cooks, waitrons and bartenders to come up with ads on the spot may go under the header of “cruel and unusual hiring practices”, but it’s no more unorthodox than our business model. Besides, it isn’t like we’re expecting advertising greatness.

 

Of course, should greatness reveal itself…

 

“Tuey, can I show you something?”

 

“Um, sure.  I guess.”

 

“Follow me, please.”

 

I led our young applicant out of the dining room, past the big six-tops, empty now, around which our employees had gathered for so many a late-night brainstorming session.  At these tables, a rag-tag group of part-time restaurant workers and full-time screw-ups had transformed themselves into savvy marketing men and women, capable of creating category-bending work for amusement parks and funeral parlors and everything in between.

 

OK, the campaign for Lempke-McKray, your Family Funeral Partners was ultimately dreamed up at the Hoffbrau down the street, but we’d started the process here.

 

When we entered the kitchen, Tuey asked me about a framed picture and I explained that it was a portrait of our mad genius, Pongo, who despite struggling with English, was able to distill every marketing problem into a single word.  Or three.

 

“I thought he was an orangutan in a white uniform.”

 

“He may have been that, too.  Hey, guys!”

 

Tuey was introduced to our cook, Jorge, and Jorge Junior, Jorge’s nephew and officially the Smugglers’ Inn landscaper.  Both men were scrubbing a stainless-steel broiler hood that had been allowed to grow dull during the pandemic.

 

The two young people, I noted, smiled at each other.

 

Past Jorge’s white-tile performance space and the smell of cleanser, we arrived at the food prep area and the Hobart 88. 

 

“What does it do?”

 

“It’s a chain driven auto-ride commercial dishwasher, sprayer and disposal.

 

“It looks, like, super old.”

 

“This one was made in 1973, but it looks like every Hobart dishwasher since the 1960’s.  Would you like to try it out?”

 

And that, folks, is how you hire a dishwasher.  I’ll ask Lynda to get that Trey kid back in; he can’t be any worse than what’s-her-T-name. Can you imagine trying to sell licorice based on the fact it turned your mouth into something out of Walking Dead?

 

I didn’t tell hostess Lynda that the two Jorge’s have green cards that look like they were rendered in colored pencil or that there is a bottle of Thai whiskey spiked with wasp venom under the bar for patrons who wish to get more screwed-up than they can with a five-shot rum punch. We are scrupulous about protecting our customer from food-born illnesses, bad service, bar violence or marketing campaigns that fail to move the needle, but we aren’t the police.  Or the mall cops.

 

Of course, Smugglers’ Inn will be a different place going forward.  New people.  New seating capacity limits.  And new debt.  Even now, I feel the creditors closing in.

 

Has Smuggler’s Inn survived the plague only to be pecked to death by ducks?  Oh, hell no. We were under threat of bankruptcy when we became a restaurant/ad agency a decade ago. Our employees then, true madmen and women, had nearly laughed themselves sober coming up with ads and posters hawking the physical assets of a theme restaurant that hadn’t redecorated since the 1970’s.  The president of the popular industry rag, Restaurant News, keeps a framed, 900-line ad from that campaign in his office.  It offers a seven-foot disco ball for sale with the come on, “Gay?  Thinking about it?”

 

That was one of the tamer ones.

 

It must have been a slow news week, because the story of a group of employees who all seemed to be frustrated comedians stepping up to sell-off the restaurant where they worked warranted a one-minute bit on the local ABC affiliate.  In it, bartender Scotty (in reality, an Irishman) badgers the junior reporter into buying a meat cleaver for $20 rather than witness Scotty cut off his big toe with the scary-looking utensil.  The footage of Scotty propping his bare foot on a cutting board and taking a couple of practice swipes while the reporter frantically fumbles for his wallet went viral.  And Smugglers’ Inn was famous.

 

OK, so everything went viral ten years ago.  Give us a break, will you?  The point is, the Smugglers’s Inn pirate ship may have foundered on the pandemic sandbar, but she did not sink and now the tide is coming in. 

 

So, good citizens, hide your sheep and lock up your accounts, because a new crew of Smugglers’ Inn misfits is preparing an assault on all that is safe and predictable. As our logo, Cap’n Saltee is fond of saying, “Arr! Arr! Arrrrrrrrrr!”