River Cities Business Journal: Business Profile

News West

BULLHEAD CITY - A popular locally owned restaurant that served as a meeting place for several organizations closed its doors for good July 3 at midnight.

The Colorado Grill and Catering Company has been operating in the Riverview Mall for almost three years, according to co-owner Chris Moore.

“We had a fantastic ‘out of the gate',” Moore said, but “As other restaurants opened, we started to take a bit of a beating.”

“Our last year, for example, was a pretty down year for us, but this past couple of months have been incredibly good,” he said.

“We've been able to weather the storm of really a thousand nationally recognized restaurant seats opening.”

Moore was referring to the opening of Chili's in Bullhead City and Joe's Crab Shack and Saltgrass Steak House at the Golden Nugget in Laughlin.

“Chili's opened up and we felt that right away. That's an operation with 260 seats,” compared to 110 at the Colorado Grill, Moore said.

But things were recently looking up. “Our business was up 25 percent over the past three weeks. We were so hopeful that things were going to work out with this situation,” he said.

“We had made all the changes necessary.” Those changes included cutting the staff from 50 to 30 employees, leaving a core of “good friends and fantastic people who have been there for us from the beginning, many of them.”

Moore feels badly for the people who are now out of work. He and his wife, Colorado Grill manager Shannon, can find work easily, he said, but some of the others face a tight job market.

Shannon's parents have 30-year ties to Bullhead City. Chris and Shannon met one summer working in Cape Cod, Mass.

They eventually got married. “We catered our own wedding,” Moore said. The couple has two children and has put down roots. “This is the longest we've been anywhere,” he said.

“Last year, I had grandiose ideas and grandiose plans. I let things get ahead of me,” Moore said.

“I became fixated on opening new restaurants and trying to beat the ‘nationals' and I wasn't focusing on what needed to be focused on,” he said.

“I learned my lesson and recommitted myself ...”

But it was apparently too late. “We had fallen behind in rent and (Riverview Mall owner Fred Leeds) had sent us a letter that said on this day, which was the 3rd of July, that we needed to come up with $10,000.”

“We raised that capital and I called him and I said, ‘Mr. Leeds, where do I present this money?' and he said it is now $16,000 because July (rent) is due and I said, ‘Fred, it's not due until the 5th,' and he said, ‘no it's due on the 1st' and he goes, ‘I won't accept anything less than 16 (thousand).'” Moore said he couldn't come up with the additional $6,000 on such short notice.

“He did that on the 3rd, so between 5 o'clock and midnight, all of our employees came to the restaurant. We took as much (of our personal equipment) as we could out of there,” Moore said. “I had to leave behind close to $100,000 worth of equipment.”

Leeds released the following statement through a spokesman: “The restaurant is closing for personal reasons. Although they were very successful, we're currently looking for a new restaurant that will be beneficial to the Bullhead community.”

Now, Moore is scrambling to honor his catering commitments. “We had booked in the neighborhood of 20 events ... we're going to fulfill our commitments - the ones we can, we will.”

“The catering is something we'd like to continue. I'm a restaurant guy. That's what I do and we're going to explore our options.”

Moore is temporarily running the catering business out of his Riviera home. “We will need a fully licensed facility and we're working hard to get there soon.”

Organizations that used the restaurant for their meetings, like the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis, had only a day or two to find a new gathering spot.

“Actually, I was out of town and found out about it (the night before the July 5 meeting) at about 5 o'clock when I walked in the door,” said Ken Sondgeroth, Kiwanis president. For the July 5 meeting, the Kiwanis were able to relocate to Colianno's Italian Restaurant.

The Rotary Club moved its meetings to El Palacio Mexican Restaurant, which is “going to take care of us this week, so that we can find another place to go,” said Kelly Burgess, Rotary Club president.

He described the club's relationship with El Palacio as “temporary, as of yet.” As for their old stomping grounds, “We loved meeting there. Everything was always great and we're certainly sad to see them go.”

Sondgeroth echoed those sentiments. “They were always very accommodating in everything we asked of them. Sorry to see them go.”

“We wanted to be and always tried to be the family neighborhood restaurant,” Moore said. “The community is really standing behind us and people have been calling for two days straight, asking what they can do to help,” Moore said. “It's really amazing.”