Recently, my friends Chris Reyes, Sarah Fleming, Eric Swartz and Brad Phelan over at Live From Memphis put together a series of webisodes for ArtsMemphis to give people easy access to a visual that expresses the tremendous work going on in the collective arts in Memphis — everything from theater to metallurgy (at the Ornamental Metal Museum) to this week’s webisode, featuring the Stax Music Academy.
In case you’re not familiar with what they do, Stax Music Academy provides an outlet for musically-gifted inner city youth in Memphis to develop their musical talent with top regional industry professionals, artists and musicians. These webisodes will give you just the slightest glimpse into the wonderful work that has been going on, perhaps unbeknownst to you, for several years.
The efforts of Live From Memphis are being released on a weekly basis to this player, which appears on the ArtsMemphis homepage. Be sure to check back on a regular basis to have an opportunity to share in the joy and excitement that the Live From Memphis folks were able to capture. Memphis, this is something for us all to support and take pride in.
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I was born and raised in Memphis and, though I’ve moved around a lot, I’m proud to call Memphis my birthplace and home. I’ve watched the economic highs and lows of the city for over 1/3rd of a century. I’ve been living in Midtown/Downtown Memphis for the better part of four years now, and I’ve been on the lookout for great new places that cropped up. In my neighborhood, a place called Quetzal opened its doors some time back and I have been a regular patron for a good portion of their existence, a vocal and financial supporter of their decision to come to Memphis from San Francisco because, after all, good new businesses build better communities.
That all changed today. Get ready for a meeting with a “business hippie”.
If I go into a restaurant or business, I spend money. I work for the money that I spend, and I spend it carefully. Sometimes, I spend a lot (if I have a lot), sometimes I only spend a little. But I always spend money, just like you do.
So now, imagine my surprise when, as I was connecting to my own Sprint Mobile Broadband connection (Quetzal’s internet, as is frequently the case, was down), the owner of Quetzal, Fred Charron, walked up to me and had the nerve to say to me, “You know, this is a restaurant. In order to be in here, you have to buy something.”
At first, I had to think about what I had just heard. I was kind of shocked. Was he talking to me? Realizing that in the fifteen minutes I’d been inside Quetzal today I hadn’t made my daily beverage purchase, I thought that either Fred had me confused with someone else or he was being needlessly micro-managerial.
I replied, “I always purchase something when I’m here.” Unfettered by my halfway-shocked objection, he continued with this line of defensive, and unbecoming, commentary saying, “No, it’s all the time. It’s a consistent problem with you.”
At this point, I just thought to myself, “This man is completely crackers.” I’ve never had anyone with whom I’ve spent so much money have the unmitigated gall to actually walk up to me and utter even a fraction of these words in my entire life, and never anything with such a threatening and disconnected tone.
I sat back and thought about the amount of money I’ve spent (not to mention the numerous people I’ve brought there for meals or coffee, friends whom I’ve had meals and coffees with there) at Quetzal over the last couple of years, how I had applied for a job and been rejected (because I’m “a regular customer”), and the more I considered what I had just heard him say, the more I was incensed. No, I was insulted.
Fred wants you to know, apparently, that he has clearly spent a great deal of money moving his operation to Memphis. He has built a place where, I guess, you’re required to spend a certain amount of money in order for it to “count”. But money can’t buy you manners, I guess, and down here in the South, we pride ourselves on having a few simple things like, well, manners.
Since I’m about to forget my manners, I hope you’ll still bear with me. You see, I then, in my rage, thought about the people whom Quetzal had hired over the period in which I, myself, had applied for a job. I began to wonder aloud if Quetzal’s hiring practices were ageist? It doesn’t seem like anyone over the age of 30 has a job there except, perhaps, the owner and the manager. But, of course, you have to remember — I’m pretty upset by what I’ve just heard. I can’t really control my thoughts.
I came to recognize the problems here: it’s probably out of the frustration that this guy feels over having built a business, invested all this money in trying to give people a false “sense” of community that doesn’t exist either in his neighborhood or at his establishment. I guess someone made the mistake of suggesting to him that he has to present himself as ill-mannered with his “regular customers” in order to get us to spend more money. So while I’m grateful that he would run the riff-raff off the property, and while I don’t fault him for needing and wanting to make money, Fred needs to recognize: people like me aren’t the riff-raff and we certainly aren’t the people he wants to present himself towards in this way. Like any business owner, he has a right to earn a living. However, If I owned such a business and I was trying to make money, I’d be working overtime trying to keep customers instead of losing them over insignificances and petty grievances.
Alas, the key “human element” of business seems to be lost on Fred, on his clientele, and on a couple of the people who work for him — but, then again, that must be why a business like Quetzal is forced into constantly hiring. At $2.13 an hour plus tips when it’s busy (the minimum server wage in Memphis) and an average menu price of $7.00 per person, I guess they expect their employees to do all the work (wait tables, make coffee, make food, wash dishes) while someone else keeps all the money for themselves.
Where’s the community spirit here? It’s a reasonable question. The single owner of this business knows that any sense of belonging or care to belong to our community doesn’t exist because, you see, Quetzal wants to win at the “short con” — getting your money now before you see who they really are.
Makes you wonder why they’ve expanded their reach from San Francisco, doesn’t it? I think it’s because we’re the FedEx hub and they want cheaper shipping, but please remember — I’m just angry because a place where I’ve spent a lot of money just treated me like a panhandler.
Other than a place for Commercial Appeal employees to walk to for a smoothie or an organic coffee, Quetzal is merely another visitor to Memphis that thinks it’s here for the long haul, one who will have to make some serious adjustments if they want to be a part of and serve the community purpose in our town that businesses of their nature must in order to survive.
They’ve made it clear to me that they want to build a business that caters to and is meant to serve only people who spend “enough” money with them, and if you’re not spending “enough” money with them, then you have to be spoken to like a third grader. Who does this Fred person think he is, The Crescent Club? Maybe Quetzal should be like a health club where you have to buy a membership to enter. Maybe this way, people in Memphis might begin to take this kind of behaviour seriously on the part of a business owner; unfortunately for him, they won’t take it seriously anyways.
If you want good organic coffee, spend some money at a respected establishment like Otherlands, an established Memphis business that has roots in our community which run deep. Instead of trying to “create” a sense of community to the otherwise uninformed, Otherlands has actually built a community in their long existence without feeling the need to treat you like you’re rubbish. If you need decent Fair Trade Certified coffee beans from a real Memphis-based business, try The Ugly Mug, available at at any number of grocery stores.
As for Quetzal, thanks for building a little coffee Disneyland five minutes from Downtown where horror stories of snotty service, mediocre food and pretty good coffee continue to run through the city like the Mississippi River itself. Much like that river, let’s hope Quetzal stays true to the legacy of businesses of its nature and passes right on through.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I walked to the counter and waved a $100 bill at Fred and said, “Do you see this? This is my hard-earned money which I would gladly have spent here today. But you had to make a big deal out of something that really isn’t. Now, I’ll take my business elsewhere.” Thanks for helping me to, once again, realize what’s really important about the community that is so much a part of who I am.
The really sad part of this: I doubt a situation like this would happen at Starbucks.
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