By Cole Boehler
Everyone knows the hospitality business is among the most risky. Just casually ask your bankers for a loan to buy or open a restaurant or tavern, then wait until they stop laughing.
You'd better know your business or otherwise have a lot of moxie if you want into this game.
Or you can take the approach Rhonda and David Waylander have adopted: diversify your enterprises, then work your tails off.
The couple, well known in Livingston business circles, operates three hospitality businesses there: the Dusty Boot, which is an upscale restaurant with a bar and a half dozen gaming machines and a dancehall upstairs; the 49er, which is more of a sports bar and casino that features food from the adjacent 49er Diner; and Capone's Hide-Out, a gaming parlor focused almost exclusively on video gaming.
And while the Dusty Boot and Capone's would make for interesting business profiles in their own right, since we met with the Waylanders at the 49er, that is the setting for this article.
Rhonda says she is a Fort Benton native who moved to Livingston at age 12 and graduated high school there. Eventually she married and started a family while she clerked and cut meat at a local grocery store.
David was raised in Billings and graduated from West High. His parents purchased Yellowstone Music, a candy and snacks and amusement machine vending route. Dave went to the work for the company while attending MSU in Bozeman. He also married and had children.
Eventually, his folks sold the route to Larry Lippen, a VLC executive, then David joined VLC and worked routes in southwest Montana. He was also running another vending route in Casper, Wyo., splitting his time between the states.
About that time he met Rhonda. Before long they decided to become marriage partners as well as business partners. When they opened the 49er in 1994, it had a simple beer and wine license, but within the year they picked up an all-beverage license from a local fraternal club.
The 49er is nestled in a small strip mall along Park Avenue, the main highway through town before I-90 looped around it.
The place is substantially more roomy than one would expect from outside. The room is deeper and the ceilings higher. It is also well laid out with a cozy main bar area for customers who are looking for society, and a spacious area to the side for pool, darts, buddy bars, big-screen TVs and, of course, 20 gaming machines.
The establishment has a clean, modern and comfortable feel to it--not cluttered as is the fashion in some saloons. A P.O.S. and liquor control system is in place to enhance sound business practices, inventory control and to assure consistent drink pours.
The next-door 49er Diner serves breakfasts and lunches from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., then the tavern/casino offers a full dinner menu from 2-8 p.m.
Rhonda refers to the restaurant fare as "comfort food, home cooking, casseroles." That day's special is a meat loaf sandwich, for example. But Prime rib is on the menu every Friday night. And homemade from-scratch pizza is available every day.
The breakfast business is a fair profit center, Rhonda says, while the rest of the menu is priced somewhat more attractively to augment the day and nighttime bar and casino business.
The 49er takes a good crew of 16 or so to fully staff the 1,200 square-foot, 54-seat business, whereas Capone's Hide-out, opened in 1996, requires only four.
And the need to retain good employees, Rhonda says, is a business lesson that has come home.
"We try to pay a little better and offer some benefits," she says. They'd like to be able to offer health insurance but the ever-rising premiums are a spooky proposition for a small business.
The couple confesses to having worked long hours in getting the various enterprises launched and profitable, only taking time to attend their children's sports and other events.
Rhonda has a 24-year-old son, Brad, and a 21-year-old daughter, Tiffany, who is a student at MSU-B. David has a 19-year-old daughter, Whitney, who is an MSU student and part-time bank teller, and a 16-year-old son, Wil, who plays basketball for the Bozeman high school squad.
These days, mostly because of "good help," the Waylanders say they find they can take a little more time away to trave and golf. And they apparently enjoy their small five-acre "farm" on the city's edge.
"That's the 'home base' for us and the kids," David says.
They also say they would like to retire within 10 years.
And they've just completed a long pull in harness for, first, the Park County Tavern Association (24 years for David), and then serving long stints as directors on the Montana Tavern Association board.
David also coached girls softball for 13 years. Rhonda has recently picked up the mantle for the local Battered Women's Shelter and was in the middle of a fundraiser coinciding with Sexual Violence Awareness Month.
But it seems fundraising is part and parcel to the hospitality business in Montana. The Waylanders recently raised $8,000 to aid a youth cancer victim and have raised $5,400 toward reconstruction of a military memorial in a local park that had been vandalized.
David says the Dusty Boot has been up for sale for two years, but he isn't a particularly motivated seller. In fact, the price has been boosted once since it hit the market, not lowered.
"I've got it marked at my price," David says, acknowledging that he's had some "tire-kickers" looking. Residential and commercial real estate values have been coming up nicely over the last half deade in Livingston and the Paradise Valley.
"We were going to do the Dusty Boot one year," David says with a laugh. "Now we've been doing it five years."
And, as the Tavern Times was being readied for press, it appeared the Waylanders were poised to swap some work hours for a little more leisure--the sale of the Dusty Boot was indeed pending.
"But you know how that goes," Rhonda said. "It's not a done deal until the money changes hands."
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, June 2007, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.