September 25th Meeting

Candy introduced Martin M. Mason, proprietor of THE EGG & I restaurant at 183 US Route 1. After a brief introduction, he entertained many questions from club members.
 

After 20 successful years with Home Depot, he decided  that Scarborough needed a good  breakfast restaurant and he wanted to own a restaurant. His only prior experience was washing dishes as a teenager.  Serving on breakfast and lunch, he likes being able to leave in the afternoon to go home or play golf. 

 He began with Home Depot in the Washington DC area where he opened  the first 2 locations. Later, he was sent to Detroit to open their first Michigan locations, then to Columbus, Ohio where he opened 14 locations! Having spent his honeymoon in Maine, he moved here 3 years ago to manage all 11 stores in Maine.

After much research, he chose THE EGG & I because out of 61 restaurants there have been no failures. (He noted the 80 % failure rate of independent restaurants.) They have a national contract with Sysco to supply their locations. The only proprietary product is a hot sauce located on each table. The Scarborough restaurant is the first on the East coast. The standard menu allow for regional variations with “Prime Catch” menu insert for New England. The Denver based chain has most of their locations in Colorado and Texas. Martin disclosed that he is opening a second location in the former Friendlys (Old HOJO’s) at Exit 48 in Portland.

He opened on May 20th with the entire first day’s proceeds ($6,100) donated to Project Grace. There are 150 seats in Scarborough. The new Portland location will also have 150 seats. He stressed that they not want to over load the kitchen with too many seats-especially with their giant size pancakes which take 8 minutes to cook.

The #1 seller is Eggs Benedict followed by #2 best seller, Corn Beef Hash. The Scarborough restaurant employs 25. All prospective employees are tested for drugs. Martin was surprised by the high drug test failure rate.