Montana Gaming Group

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In one of his restaurants, he put in some old advertising signs for décor. The old signs and memorabilia, he found, struck a chord with him and he recalls, “I started going to shows and started to seriously collect old signs, Coke machines and gas pumps. In fact, for a while we operated an antique and antique restoration business. That eventually led to the idea of Sparky's.”
    He opened the first Sparky's Garage in Dillon in December 2002, with a theme of advertising and automotive memorabilia. The Dillon store is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and has a cabaret license for wine and beer.
    Finding success with the first Sparky's Garage, David and Kathie looked to Butte as a logical location for a second Sparky's, and located an old garage building on East Park Street in Uptown Butte. The building, itself, was built around 1909 or 1910, so there's a century of history in the building. In his office he has a photo from a 1950 era Fourth of July parade going by the front of the building, then housing the Butte Motor Company, a Ford dealership, on one side of the building and a B.F. Goodrich tire store on the other side.
    Locating the building and making a deal for leasing the property was just a start, however. Taking the old building and re-creating it as a bar and restaurant took over a year and a half, as they stripped and power-washed walls, and then put in new partitions, new plumbing and electricity, ductwork, coolers, and a kitchen, plus installing a full-service bar and a casino area.
    David and Kathie, along with their son, Marcus, as general manager of both the Butte and Dillon restaurants, along with a daughter, daughter-in-law, and a mother pitching in, opened the Butte restaurant in the fall of 2009, and happily had an immediate hit.
    Marcus, incidentally, when asked how long he's been involved with the restaurant business gets a blank look on his face, shrugs and says, “I can't ever remember not being involved.” Kathie laughs and says, “I remember his infant seat being parked next to the prime rib cooker.”
    Marcus was a freshman in high school when the Dillon Sparky's opened, which marks when he got seriously involved with the family business. In addition to being involved with the management of the two restaurants, Marcus is also pursuing a business management degree at UM-Western at Dillon.
    Looking at their timing, David agrees that the new start-up was a gutsy move, and adds, “The economy actually declined while we worked on the building. But the results, after we opened, exceeded our expectations.”
    David acknowledges that the automotive memorabilia theme helps bring people into the restaurant, though he downplays that aspect. “It's the basics – that's what it takes. Good food and good service. The atmosphere may bring people in, but it's the food and service that brings them back.” He also points out that he has good customer parking, as another factor in building the business.
   The menu is broad-based, with prime rib leading the list of entrees, along with barbecue and sandwiches. For a taste of something different, they offer sweet potato fries. “Sweet potato fries, cornbread and coleslaw all go well with barbecue,” Kathie points out.
    The automotive theme has some different twists. There's a 1950 Buick Roadmaster parked just inside the garage doors in front of the bar. A Twin Bridges area person originally owned the classic Roadmaster and in later years the car spent time in a Virginia City restaurant and then went into storage in Ennis. David and Marcus bought the car and brought it to Butte.
    In the bar itself, there are two old authentic old gas pumps from Montana.
Directly downstairs there's a walk-in cooler and direct lines from the cooler to the gas pumps, with each pump sporting 10 different tap handles and draft beers. “Mostly Montana beers,” David points out.
    In the dining area there's a 1949 Chevrolet pickup truck, and the back of the truck has become a popular seating choice for many diners. Another clever touch is that they use "shop rags" for napkins.
    The Drews are happy they established their business in the historic uptown area. For that matter, other uptown restaurants are also happy they are there, as the new restaurant has brought additional traffic for everybody. Ticking off names of other uptown restaurants, such as Fred's Mesquite Grill, the Uptown Café, and Trimbo's Pizza, David comments, “I think the uptown dining scene is going pretty well. It helps with all of us up here.”
    Kathie takes pleasure in growing flowers.
    As a couple, they enjoy travel and look back fondly to the time they had their antique and antique restoration business and went to antique shows all over the West Coast and as far east as Chicago.
    Marcus tries to get outdoors for fly fishing or hunting when he has the chance.
With two successful auto and advertising memorabilia-theme restaurants going, the Drews are beginning to talk about the possibility of new Sparky's Garage franchises, and they say they have had inquiries about possibilities.
    An obstacle to that, David acknowledges, is the challenge of collecting additional memorabilia for new restaurants.
    “It makes me cringe,” he says, “when I think of all the stuff buried in landfills. I've talked to people who worked for Coca-Cola bottlers some years back and they remember when they got new Coke machines in the 1960s, and simply hauled out those 1950s-era machines – the ones that now have a lot of value – out to the dump.”