By Paul F. Vang
The red barn looks a bit incongruous in the quiet residential setting, and the cartoon cows and pigs seem like someone went a little crazy with the paintbrush.
Then you understand: it' not crazy; it' crazee, and this isn't a real barn, it' Crazee Carol' Barn.
Then you spend some time chatting with Crazee Carol herself, and you begin to understand that Carol Heim isn't crazy, after all, unless she's "crazy like a fox." The fact is, she has a pretty sophisticated business philosophy that has been the basis for solid success in a highly competitive field.
Crazee Carol' story goes back to a dairy farm in Elk Park, the high mountain valley along the Continental Divide just north of Butte.
Siv and Sylvia Galetti were among a number of Swiss and Italian dairy farmers who provided Butte residents with fresh milk and dairy products. In the Galetti operation, they sold raw, unpasteurized milk, a product preferred by many just a few decades ago.
Siv suffered severe burns in a fire and keeping on with the hard work of running a dairy operation became increasingly difficult. In addition, the era of raw milk was coming to an end. In 1962 Siv and Sylvia sold the ranch and moved into Butte, where they purchased the Mill Bar, a historic neighborhood bar with a history going back to the 1800s.
Siv and Sylvia' children, including Carol, grew up in and around the bar. At first the family home was a few blocks from the bar, but after several break-ins and thefts in the middle of the night, Siv decided to move into an apartment over the bar, telling his family, "I'm going to move upstairs. That way I can shoot them on the way out."
After Siv' death in the early 1980s, Sylvia continued to run the bar until 1984, when she sold the business. The buyers later defaulted on making payments, so the bar came back into Sylvia' estate after her death.
Carol, then a single mom and an interviewer at Butte' Job Service office, had the responsibility of clearing up the estate. To expedite things, Carol bought out her brother and sister' shares of the business, and took over the bar operation.
"I hired Joe Nalley as a bartender, while I kept my job at Job Service, and worked nights in the bar," Carol recalls. It was a struggle.
Carol describes herself as "a player" who enjoyed playing at the then handful of casinos in the Butte area. "A friend asked, "Why don't you put a casino in your bar?'
"I said, "My location on Walnut Street isn't very good.'"
"'This is Butte,'" she says her friend responded. ""Who cares about your location?'"
Remodeling the neighborhood bar into a casino was a big risk. "People (loan officers) didn't even want to look at me," she recalls. Still, she put all her eggs into one basket and took the risk to jump into the gaming business.
Carol remodeled the old neighborhood bar to create a casino area and in August 1992 opened Crazee Carol' Casino, one of just eight casinos operating at the time in Butte.
With the advice of Dennis Nettles, a now deceased veteran Butte radio personality, she started marketing the casino with a series of radio ads that often seemed, well…crazy. Crazy or not, it got the message out that Crazee Carol' Casino was a fun place to be.
Carol notes, "The "Crazee' name stuck. Many people just call me "Crazee.'"
In 1996, just as success was building, Carol was diagnosed with breast cancer, in addition to other chronic health problems. Carol' adult daughter, Jeanette Kappes, walked away from a 10-year career with Nordstrom', the Seattle-based retailing giant, to come back to her hometown of Butte to help keep the business going while Carol dealt with her health problems.
Jeanette had been a human resources manager for Nordstrom' in Salt Lake City and confesses that leaving Nordstrom' for a new role at Crazee Carol' was a culture shock.
"I was the biggest misfit--ever. I was the HR director and we had a strict policy about not allowing much of the humor that goes around on fax machines and the internet, because some employees might consider it sexual harassment. There was no smoking, a strict dress code. It was all very professional. Then I come here," she says with a laugh, "and everybody is drinking, smoking and joking."
It' a business management team with a successful track record, though Crazee Carol', in its out of the way neighborhood location, keeps under most radar screens.
"At a tavern association dinner," Carol recalls, "someone once walked up and congratulated a gaming equipment salesman. "I want to shake your hand. Imagine, selling 20 machines to Carol.'"
Jeanette adds, however, "I sometimes show our numbers, in confidence, to some people in the gaming business, and they usually say something to the effect of, "Holy ____!' We've never gone backwards. We keep going up. We always exceed even our own expectations."
They've cut back to 17 units, but Jeanette asserts that those 17 machines do even better than 20 did in previous years.
So, what is the basis for Crazee Carol' success?
Jeanette is quick to say that customer service is a strong factor.
"Customer service is an ongoing process. Our success is based on giving people more than they expect. For example, every day we give customers a free lunch. We bring in food, and then we have daily lunch drawings."
"I think we've built this business on generosity," Jeanette points out. "You give and it comes back to you."
A second factor for success is their loyal staff, which is not an accident.
"We pay them a good rate," Jeanette says. "We take care of them. They're family. We don't have much employee turnover. We do well because we're not always training people. Our employees are the lifeline of our business."
Jeanette also gives credit to the fact that Carol, herself, enjoys gaming and has an innate sense of what other players like and respond to.
Carol says that the bar portion of the business is not the key part of the operation. While she readily gives credit to her bartenders ("We have two excellent bartenders"), she says that the bar business can be difficult, acknowledging at the same time, "We've always operated in the neighborhood, and we've never had a lot of young people wanting to drink us dry."
For a 10-year period, Carol also operated a second Crazee Carol' at another location.
"We had a good business at that location," she says, adding, "We had this customer who became a regular. What we figured out later was that he was studying the business and how we operate. Then, out of the blue, he came to us and made an offer to buy the operation."
While Carol has never held any offices, Crazee Carol' is a long time member of the Montana Tavern Association and the Silver Bow Tavern Association, and, as a non-drinker, "I was designated driver at a lot of functions."
In preparing for the 15th anniversary of Crazee Carol' Casino, Carol and Jeanette started thinking of refurbishing the venerable old two-story structure.
Carol says, "We first thought of re-siding the building with old barn siding. Then we thought… Let' make it look like a barn."
They worked with a local contractor, Dan Kavanaugh, and additionally give a lot of credit to a painter, Dan Hunter, who came up with cartoon figures of cows and pigs, and turned plain steel doors into what appear to be old barn doors.
Jeanette says, "It' first of all a tribute to our heritage going back to my grandparents on the dairy farm. Building on that, we think people like to play, and when they come in here now, they think in terms of this place as a playland, and they can play with the cows and pigs. The bottom line is it' more fun to play in a red barn.
"This is an out-of-the-way place, but once people come in they usually come back. We've got them."
As for the mother-daughter management team that has guided Crazee Carol' Casino through 15 years and into the 21st Century, Jeanette notes that they have different body rhythms. Jeanette manages the business during the daytime. Carol is a self-described night person.
Carol says, "I work at night, and close up every night," and after that stays up into the small hours of the morning, and then sleeps most of the day.
"I usually don't see her when I'm here," Jeanette underlined.
Jeanette admits, "We clash sometimes, but when it' all said and done, we do things the Crazee Carol way. We've done pretty well."
Carol smiles and adds, "Well, you're still alive. I haven't hung you yet."
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, January, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.