Local Alums, Local Business Owners
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What do a Korean BBQ, a dance club and a burrito place all have in common? For one thing, they’re all businesses located in Collegetown — Dasan-J on Dryden Rd., Level B on Eddy St. and That Burrito Place on College Ave. — but aside from proximity they hold something else in common. Before each of these places was a real business, it was once a vague dream in the mind of a starry-eyed Cornell student. These dreamers have graduated, though and they’re no longer starry-eyed students, but rather local small business owners and Cornell success stories.
Jae Jung grad ’03, owns Dasan-J, a Korean barbeque restaurant located in Collegetown. After beginning his career in finance, Jung segued into the restaurant business when he began working for T.G.I. Friday’s in Korea. It was there that he came up with his plan to open a restaurant. He said, “When I was a financial analyst before having this job — before the M.M.H. [degree] — I was involved with T.G.I. Friday’s. My company brought T.G.I. Friday’s into Korea and I was involved in the finance part so I got involved with the food industry.”
Jung left Korea and came to the United States to attend Cornell’s Master of Management and Hospitality program. There, his professors helped him further develop his business plan.
“I worked together with a couple of my professor during the M.M.H. program and I had some practice providing them some food and I was just a little creative,” he said. “It was fusion style — not Korean or Asian food, but food adopted to American style and a couple of professors worked together to help me create it.”
Upon graduating, Jung immediately set to work. He said, “The restaurant I started five years ago, the year after I started ice cream stores and then two years ago I started the trading company. This year I’m starting a real estate investment consulting company.” Only Dasan-J is located in Collegetown; the ice cream stores — which feature Dippin’ Dots ice cream — are located in Rochester, Watertown, Cooperstown and in Ithaca at the Pyramid Mall. Originally he started his ice cream business to deal with the summertime business slump in Collegetown.
Just drinks: Level B is another Collegetown business owned by a Cornell alumnus.Jung said he chose to open his first business in Collegetown because of the traffic. He explained, “Most of the students come by over here rather than down town, which is a little more local, but local people do not know international food as well as students.” He added, “Young people adapt very easily to international food.” Jung estimates that nearly 80 percent of his customers are students.
Jung said that his experience at Cornell was invaluable. At Cornell, he said, “I learned how to survive. Just reading a book, homework and exams — you forget everything like that after you graduate, but you learn to survive.” Jung does, however, cite certain courses at Cornell that he found particularly useful.
“The franchising courses I had were great, and I will study more and research more about it,” he said. “Actually, I’m going back to Korea next month to meet some businessmen and do presentations for my franchising concept.”
Jung has big plans for the future, as he explained, “I’m planning to franchise. I’m going to bring them — the Korean businessmen — over here and show them how it works.” He hopes to open franchises in Manhattan and he added, “I’m thinking about 42nd Street. We’re looking for space right now.”
Like Jung, Jeff Mayer ’05 is a local business owner who is in the process of expansion. Mayer owns That Burrito Place on College Ave., which he opened in January 2007, and currently he is in the process of opening an additional location on the Commons. Also, in October he also became partial owner of Rulloff’s, which is also located on College Ave.
Before opening That Burrito Place, Mayer said he didn’t have any restaurant experience. He said, “I didn’t even wait tables.” Instead, he explained, “I’d run my own consulting company for about two years.”
Mayer said that Cornell was integral in his decision to create a restaurant. He said, “I came up with the idea in 2004. It started as a class project. I did it in a few different classes for a marketing class, I did the marketing plan. I wrote the business plan in a writing class I took. And a restaurant design class was where I designed the concept.” He added, “Some people get a lot of theory from Cornell. I got a lot of tangibles. It was more like a trade school for me.”
Upon graduating, Mayer put his class project into action. He said, “It took me a year to find the location and sign the lease. Then it took me another six months to get opened with construction and everything.” The opening was a success, and, as Mayer explained, “We even sold out of food on the first week and I had close on Sunday. We were so popular from the day we opened.”
After experiencing success with That Burrito Place, Mayer decided to expand into the bar business. He said, “Some classmates of mine bought Rulloff’s and asked me if I wanted to go in with them because I was here in town.”
Although he hasn’t owned Rulloff’s very long, he is already enjoying success there, as he said, “The brunch business at Rulloff’s is really popular. It just gets amazing business — I mean, there are people from town that have been coming in every Sunday for twenty years.”
Like Jung and Mayer, Brad Weiss ’03 is also a Collegetown bar owner and graduate of Cornell’s M.M.H. program. He opened Level B on Eddy St. three years ago, as he explained, “I graduated in May 2003 and I knew I wanted to open a bar. I didn’t know where I wanted to live, so I spent the first summer in Rhode Island at a friend’s bar helping him. Then in November 2003 I started looking at this location and in January 2004 I started talking to the landlord. I didn’t come up with the money until September 2004. I signed a lease then and didn’t open until November 2005 so in between I was just managing the project for a whole year.” He added, “So I did have the intention of opening a bar, but not in Ithaca ... I hadn’t planned on staying here, that was the unexpected part.”
Just Dino's: A Cornell alumnus is the owner of Dino's, on College Ave.Ultimately, though, a number of factors influenced him to locate in Collegetown. He explained, “It seemed like a lot of the bars were homogenous and lots of people in Collegetown go out. Only one other bar — the Chapter House — is for graduate students, and I already lived here, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Also, all the girls I knew wanted a place to dance and a place with nice bathrooms.” Weiss sought to create a classy, high-end bar environment. However, in a college area, this proved harder than he had anticipated.
“Firs,t we were trying to be kind of high end — I mean, we still are — but students have a budget. Most students don’t have a ton of money; most students don’t have a job. At first we weren’t doing any specials. Well, we had drink specials like martinis, but there weren’t any cheap beers or specials. Now we still have expensive drinks — like expensive martinis — but now we have fishbowls on Wednesdays and we have a $2 shot every night. We’re still trying to maintain an image and so that’s why we didn’t lower the price on everything thing, just on some things.”
Another difficulty Weiss sees in running a bar in a Collegetown is that, “It’s a bar and all of our clientele has recently turned 21. If it’s not a college town you have more seasoned drinkers, but you just have a bunch of different issues with students. I mean, every year you’re gonna have somebody who thinks it’s fun to take the fire extinguisher off the wall and dispense it on the dance floor.”
Just burritos: TBP is owned by a recent alumnus, who has also purchased Rulloff's.
There are some advantages to owning a business in Collegetown, though, as Weiss explained, “The students are right here and the clientele changes every year, so if one year we have a bad business or a bad reputation or something like that, everyone graduates and we have a new clientele the next year.”
Obviously Jung, Mayer and Weiss are all Cornell success stories. So just what exactly are the lessons these entrepreneurs have learned from their East Hill business experience?
“I think the seasonality factor is very challenging. I basically operate on the 31 weeks a year when the students are in town and about 14 weeks when they’re partially in town. That’s something a lot of other people don’t have to deal with.”
Jung also finds the seasonality challenging, but he has other businesses to run during the off-season, so the lessons he’s learned from running a business in Collegetown are slightly different. Jung said, “This is a secret. Before I just focused on money; I focused on the product; I focused on the operation, but I never focused on the people — the customers, the employees, the suppliers. I didn’t focus on the people, but right now I’m starting to. This is a great secret. It’s taken me five years and I’ve spent so much money and I learned one thing — every customer is right. Every customer matters. Sometimes a crazy customer comes in, but every customer matters.”
The lessons Weiss has learned as a bar owner are slightly different; he explained, “There’s no way to make sure that everyone in a bar is 21. Being in Collegetown, it’s just impossible. You do the best you can.” The most important thing he’s learned is, according to Weiss, that ,“Things never turn out the way you think they’re gonna turn out. Everybody told me it was gonna be a lot of work. I’d managed a lot of bars, but I’d never had to do the marketing and accounting. It’s a lot more work than you’d, think running your own business.”