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Eckerd students prop up mom-pops

Midtown restaurants and shops get a boost, and students get real-world experience.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published August 6, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - Betty Hayes had a dream about barbecue sauce. It was her sauce, one she made from scratch, and she felt a calling to put it on the market.

"I never dreamed I would do something like this," said Hayes, 56, who owns Uncle Dea Family Restaurant at 1143 28th St. S with her husband, John. "It's exciting and depressing. Depressing waiting for it to catch on."

Uncle Dea is starting to catch on, both the restaurant and the barbecue sauce, in part because of the efforts of students at Eckerd College, which last year took over a program to help small businesses in the Midtown area. Hayes opened the restaurant with her chef husband as a way to promote her sauce, but without a background in running a small business, she needed all the help she could get.

After some tutoring from the city's Business Assistance Center, Hayes had set out 18 months ago, but despite a location across the street from the Wildwood Recreation Center, no one knew the restaurant was there. The Eckerd students helped her organize her business and computerize her accounting, but mostly develop promotions that draw attention from the ready audience of families at Wildwood.

"It's so neat to work here because there's so much culture," said Hartley Gillespie, one of the leaders of a group of 25 students who worked last year in Uncle Dea and four other Midtown businesses. "Everyone here has a success story. They've overcome trials and tribulations. They have really good food too."

Gillespie, 20, graduated last year with a major in international business, but the Virginia native is back in St. Petersburg to try to create a permanent position with Eckerd's Midtown initiative. She said her college life was insular and one-dimensional until she joined the project.

"Without this, I would have been at the beach," she said.

Community service is already a big part of Eckerd's curriculum, said Norm Smith, associate dean and director of the Center for the Applied Liberal Arts. Last year, the roughly 1,700 students on campus racked up about 55,000 hours of volunteer work, the majority of it in the city. The Midtown project, operating last year on a $20,000 grant from Progress Energy, is a new economic development effort, but the school aims to branch out into environmental and educational work as well.

"The students get real-world information in real time," Smith said, adding that the community service is the epitome of a liberal education. "There are hundreds of students doing work at any time in the community."

The business volunteers also pitched in with Green's Bakery, an older establishment that has struggled since a forced move. Rather than take a strictly esoteric business-planning approach, Smith said, the students went into the business and said, "How can we help?"

"Whatever I wanted them to do, they were willing to do," said Bernice Green, 62, who has run the bakery for 42 years, although she had only helped her husband until he died 13 years ago. But now that it's her show and she had to move five years ago to 3065 18th Ave. S, making ends meet has been a struggle.

"The way business is these days, I don't know what I'm going to do," she said. But with painting and organizational work from Eckerd students, she said things are picking up. "Customers admire the store. They like the colors."

In her new spot, Green struggles for the recognition she had on 22nd Street, so the students are working to broaden her appeal. They arranged a bake sale of her goods on campus and sold $250 worth of merchandise in a day, including plenty of Green's signature sweet potato pie. They also had her cater desserts for a school banquet and are helping her arrange a partnership with the on-campus food-service provider.

"They've been a great help to me," Green said. "I've enjoyed working with them."

Next up, the students may help Green develop a full-service restaurant with better promotions for sandwiches on her fresh-baked breads.

Eckerd students also worked with Joe's Market, a longtime neighborhood shop next to Green's. The students plan to help owner Joe Watkins with organization and some mechanical items, but also have a ready business plan to improve the focus of his business.

"I'm all for new ideas," said Watkins, 69. "Anything that will help the business."

Gillespie said she and her colleagues also worked with a store called Consumer Dollar and with Twigs and Leaves, a native-plant nursery featuring environmentally sound landscaping practices. The program also won an award at a Southeast U.S. competition for Students in Free Enterprise. Hayes said the next step for the students is to help her create advertising fliers so enticing that "when people read them, they're going to be so excited to come in to the restaurant," she said. "This way people can come in and taste the sauce."

Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com or by participating in itsyourtimes.com.

[Last modified August 5, 2006, 19:55:11]