Not all career plans are thoroughly planned out; sometimes you just fall into them. This was certainly the case for Kelly Bruce, a former Costco employee who recently moved her business, K’Syrah Wine, Catering and Bistro, to a new space at 316 Northeast Dallas Street in Camas.
“When this space became available, I jumped all over it,” said Bruce, while peeling and chopping onions for a fresh batch of Hungarian Mushroom soup inside the restaurant’s kitchen.
The need for a bigger kitchen was what drew Bruce to her new downtown Camas space. Bruce needed a bigger kitchen, she explained, because the restaurant that she never anticipated opening was getting busier than expected.
As Bruce tells it, she never set out to open a restaurant, it just happened that way. Out of school, with a master’s degree in international business and marketing, Bruce found herself working for Costco. In her spare time, she worked a catering and wine business with a friend. Soon, the side business became a full-time endeavor and clients were nudging her to open a restaurant. Fast-forward 10 years, and Bruce has married three of her passions: Her wine business, catering and the restaurant.
Bruce’s original location, just a few blocks away from her new space, housed her operation for seven years. For most of that time, all three arms of her business were equal income generators. However, since moving to the new location, Bruce said she’s already seeing a jump in restaurant sales and figures it will overtake the wine and catering businesses soon.
“The location that we were in before was never intended to be a restaurant or a retail space. I was only going to use it for catering,” explained Bruce. “But there was a definite need and a lot of the businesses downtown convinced me that they needed another place to eat and send their clients and patrons. So I bit the bullet and started serving lunch.”
To draw customers in, Bruce has expanded her hours of operation and utilized a combination of social media and a 2,000-name e-mail list. She tweets daily specials and soups of the day (like the arrival of that Hungarian Mushroom soup, which customers had been clamoring for her to make) and posts menus on Facebook. She also sends out two e-mails a week, with special information and event announcements.
Bruce currently employs six people, mostly a group of close-knit friends. And while she’s busy this time of year with catering events, getting the new restaurant on its feet and working to complete a cookbook, she said she’s not planning to hire more staff anytime soon. That fact keeps her quite busy, and she jokes that she’s always been one of those “on the go people.”
“I thrive on a really busy environment,” said Bruce. “That’s what has allowed me to get through this slump in the economy. I have a diverse company. We don’t just rely on restaurant sales or wine sales or catering alone to pay the bills.”
