Rustic and wonderful - Linda Egeland's two Michigan restaurants: Moose Bar & Grill in Bloomfield Hills and Beaver Creek Tackle and Beer in Westland

Nation's Business, Dec, 1993 by Sharon Nelton

She can't cook, she says, but Linda Egeland knows a thing or two about running a restaurant. She is a co-founder and the president of two successful restaurants in the Detroit area: the Moose Preserve Bar & Grill, in Bloomfield Hills, an affluent northern suburb, and the Beaver Creek Tackle and Beer, in Westland, a blue-collar community west of the city.

How about a bowl of venison chili, garnished with sour cream? Or hot pasties, the savory meat pies that are a staple of Michigan's Upper Peninsula? Or some Paul B'onion rings?

These are just a few of the dishes that grace the menus at the two establishments, which have a hunting-and-fishing-lodge theme and an atmosphere as homey as the bar on television's "Cheers." "I hear again and again from our customers how good our staff is and how friendly they are," Egeland says.

Furniture and accessories run from hickory tables and snowshoes to pine cones and deer-crossing signs. A mounted moose head, dubbed Jackson, greets visitors in the Moose Preserve's foyer. Egeland, a former environmental chemist, and her husband, Victor Dzenowagis, an executive at Stroh Brewery Co., dreamed of having a bar and restaurant of their own since their Michigan State University days, when they waited tables and tended bar at Dooley's in East Lansing.

For six years, says Egeland, who is 35, "we saved and saved and looked and looked," but they still didn't have the money to buy what they wanted. They asked three friends, including two who had also worked at Dooley's, to go in with them.

The five came up with $60,000 from savings and bought the Westland location, then known as Paddy's Pub, in 1986.

The pub was losing money, says Egeland, "but it was a pretty decent facility, and we got it for the money that we had."

In 1990, after they had turned Paddy's Pub into a success, they opened the Moose Preserve. But not without a fight. Restaurants in the area tended to be owned by chains or geared to expensive dining, and two well-regarded restaurateurs had failed at the site Egeland and her partners sought. Township officials, Egeland says, were "leery about some new young kids that have some bar in Westland coming to build a bar in their city."

The banks weren't eager, either, until the partners were able to sell a young loan officer on the concept: a place that serves casual but good food at a busy intersection within five miles of two major sports arenas. One is the Palace of Auburn Hills, where the Detroit Pistons play; the other is the Pontiac Silver Dome, home of the Detroit Lions. The partners got $150,000 from the bank, and, after promising to put $30,000 into landscaping the boarded-up property, they got the go-ahead from the township.

The partners' persistence helped their business become recognized as a state Blue Chip Enterprise in a program sponsored by the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Nation's Business honoring small companies that have overcome challenges and emerged stronger.

Combined revenue at the two restaurants exceeds $4 million annually, and employees number more than 100.

But it's not just the good food or the comfy surroundings that bring customers back. Or the big-screen TVs, the dart boards, or pool tables. It's not even the Mutt Wall of Fame, a wall with hundreds of pictures of customers' dogs that have been entered in the Moose Preserve's Mutt-of-the-Month contests. The secret, says Egeland, is that owners and staff members alike work at "making the customers believe that we really do care about them and we really appreciate their business and want them to come back."

When hiring, Egeland and her partners look for people who are outgoing, energetic, and quick to smile, and who have an attitude that says they want to work for the company and will do anything they have to do. "We'll take that over experience any day," says Egeland.