Meet Art Miner of The Crows Nest Sports Grille in Tujunga

Today we’d like to introduce you to Art Miner.

Art, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Art and Susan Miner, both engineers, are the owners of The Crow’s Nest Sports Grille. Art retired after 30 years in engineering. He had been thinking about starting a business for several years and we wanted to open a business that the community needed. A Sports Grille fit that requirement because it would provide a much needed new restaurant choice and a place to relax and enjoy a beer, a good meal and a sporting event. We started looking for a location for our sports bar about 4 years ago, but just couldn’t find the right place. We love the building we are in because of the windows and the large open space and so when it became available we jumped at the chance to lease it.

Neither of us knew anything about the Restaurant / Sports Bar business when we started. We have made a lot of mistakes, but we have learned from each of them. We have gotten where we are today with a lot of hard work, time, dedication, passion and a great crew. We believe that to be successful we need to cultivate a very happy environment and that starts with our employees. We treat our employees like family and they respond in kind. Both of our children are employees while they attend college. We are one of the very few restaurants with an extremely low employee turnover rate. We have about 18 employees.

Art runs the day to day business, as well as manage and ordering all the supplies, deal with the vendors, maintaining the menus, beer and wine selections, manage the employees, and maintaining the building. We like to say he is the Owner and the janitor.
Susan does all the bookkeeping, paying bills, all the HR tasks, employee schedules, payroll and entertainment, which is all done in the evenings and on the weekends because she has a full time engineering job during the week.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest challenge how to run a restaurant / sports bar. What we have found is that the restaurant business is NOT for the faint of heart. It is a lot of work. It takes a lot of time, dedication, passion and a great crew.

The obstacles started the day we got the keys to the building. The previous tenant filed bankruptcy and walked away from the building, leaving behind quite a mess. The place was disgusting and smelled horrible. We plunged in, cleaning, scrubbing and painting every surface, without doing any remodeling or changing any layouts in order to maintain the right to have a Beer and Wine license on the premises. Then the first challenge came, what major equipment do we need that isn’t in place already? We consulted with the head chef we hired and went from there. It has been an ongoing effort to get the appropriate equipment when we could afford it. The next challenge was staffing up. We have learned a lot about interviewing and trying to guess who will be a good employee and who won’t. Next big challenge was coming up with a menu. This is a critical task and is constantly a work in progress. It is especially difficult when you serve Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Getting the right products and dependable suppliers was a challenge. We have more than 20 suppliers, including four meat suppliers and three bread suppliers. Training the cooks to all cook the dishes the same way, so there is consistency for the customers was a challenge.

Then we had to choose the beers to sell. We had lots of beer tasting until we came up with the list of 40 beers that we started with. Then we had some wine tastings in order to pick some decent affordable wines. The next challenge was selecting a POS system. Who knew they were so expensive. We actually opened without one (what a disaster), but very quickly made the final choice and got it installed. Then phone / internet provider and a television provider. We, of course, had to have DirecTV in order to get all the Sunday NFL Games. Then we had to also get Time Warner cable in order to show the Dodger games.

After 3 years of running this business, we still learn new things every day. We try to do all we can to improve our business in any way that makes sense.

Please tell us about The Crows Nest Sports Grille.
We are a family friendly local sports bar with 28 large TVs, 48 beers on draft, and 12 wines. However, we are really all about the food. Food is one of Art’s passions and our motto is when you leave our restaurant we want you to say, “I can’t believe a how amazing the food is!”, and we hear it a lot. As an engineer, Art travelled all over the county and many recipes are those he picked up along the way. The menu has a Hawaiian theme with entrees like Kalua Pig and specials like Ahi Poke and Macadamia Nut Crusted Mahi Mahi. We also offer many vegetarian plates and boast the best Chicken Wings in the Valley. We make our own dressings, our own sauces and some great soups. We serve only Black Angus beef that is hormone free and aged before cutting into steaks. Our burgers are also made from 100% Black Angus beef.
Our most unknown quality is our breakfast. We have great biscuits and gravy, the best eggs benedict with fresh béarnaise sauce made every day. We make our own biscuits and make our own gravy. Our sausage comes from Chicago. We serve 100% Hawaiian coffee shipped directly from the Island of Kauai. Our hot sauce comes from Belize.

We are also known as a place for entertainment. Where else can you go and hear a great band without paying a cover charge? In addition to having DirecTV and Time Warner, we also have Buzz time trivia/poker, 2 pool tables, a Juke Box, and board games for the kids, (and adults). We are also know for free peanuts with the shells thrown on the floor to mix with the saw dust which is replaced every day.

Pricing:

• Breakfast – $5 – $13
• Lunch – $10 – $14
• Dinner – $13 – $26

Contact Info:

• Address: 7279 Foothill Blvd., Tujunga, CA 91042
• Website: www.thecrowsnestsg.com
• Phone: (818) 353-0852
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook: facebook.com/thecrowsnestsportsgrille
• Yelp: yelp.com/biz/the-crows-nest-sports-grille-los-angeles

Image Credit:
Art Miner