Krimo's Twenty Four...

May the Fourth be with you!

Another year ticks by...

Who would've thought twenty four years after Karen and I opened our little restaurant on Seaton Carew seafront on May 4th 1985 that Krimo's would still be going strong?
And according to a survey I conducted a couple of weeks ago it still is the place for special celebrations in Hartlepool?

I tell people we did it with £250 of our own money but it was less than that. It was actually £240! One week's wages and one week's holiday pay.
But all the credit goes to Bert Bryden, our bank manager who started the ball rolling. He gave us a personal loan to put down as a 10% deposit for our 90% building society mortgage to purchase the freehold property.

Bert knew Steve Adams, the building society manager and I had already cooked for him in a small restaurant in Peterlee. Between them they provided us with a 100% mortgage. They must either have had a lot of faith in us or lots of money to dish out. Was that the start of this current credit crunch?

In the three weeks before the Grand Opening, family and friends helped us scrub clean "Davy Jones’ Locker" as the restaurant had been known prior to closing down two years earlier. They painted, decorated, plastered, shopped, sewed, stitched...

Three weeks after opening, as the Saturdays began to be booked up well in advance, we felt so confident about the future that we organised a get-together with everyone that helped out, including Bert and Steve, to thank them for giving us the chance to take our life in our hands.



And, today, we are grateful to all the customers who have kept us going over the years, and allowed us to expand with a further two restaurants.
There is a saying in the motivational business guru's handbook which tells you to "fall in love with your customers". I guess our saga was love at first sight!
The rest is history...

Adam was 3½ when we opened. Nowadays, he runs Casa del Mar. The photo below was taken outside the original Krimo's in July 86 with his Parisian cousin, Mélissa...

May the 4th be with you...

Today is Krimo's 23rd anniversary.

We opened our restaurant at Seaton Carew on May 4th 1985. It seems like yesterday!
We moved into the flat above the restaurant on April 13th and began cleaning and decorate the ground floor restaurant with the help of family and friends. Some painted, others scrubbed and we opened on Saturday 4th May at 7.30pm to a full-house (30 people). I showed poor Karen how to take TWO orders and then retreated to the kitchen to begin cooking. She had never worked in a restaurant before, so you can imagine how hard she found it.

The first few days were spent tweaking stuff, buying stuff and coping with stuff. Had there not been so much enthusiasm and a will to take our future in our own hands, we would've easily given up in the first few weeks.
Within about a fortnight, Saturdays were fully booked days in advance and soon there wasn't an empty seat months ahead. The rest is history...

Tonight, we'll celebrate with a Salsa at Casa del Mar. And Adam will be waiting on us hand and foot. He was three and a half years old in May 1985...