interview by Skip Rowland

Brothers Vic, Nick, John, and Bill Routsis opened the Brickhouse Diner nearly six years ago. Restauranteering is challenging enough in the best of times.  I sat down with Vic and Nick to find out how they’re dealing with the current economic situation. This is how they see it.

VR: I was dating a girl that her parents owned the Mr. Submarines here in Richmond and one thing lead to another, got married to her, and then I got involved in the sub shops. My brothers came up and we opened a couple more sub shops with my father-in-law and then we decided to venture out on our own - just the brothers alone - and that’s when we found this place here in Midlothian and decided to give it a chance.
When we came [here] we had nothing; we were all young, we had nothing to fall back on to say, “Look, this is who we are and we can show you.” [Mr. Jones, the landlord] gave us a chance to open; and he said it himself that there’s been a lot of things in this property and no one has succeeded. So we took it upon ourselves to say, “Look, we gonna make it.”

NR: [Our] parents had a restaurant for 16 years in Chesapeake, Virginia, and that’s where we grew up and learned most of it; and now we’re just trying to go further with it, God willing.
Something that we’ve had to overcome is the economy.  [Good help] isn’t anything we’ve had to overcome.  All of our employees [about 20 employees total, not counting the brothers] have been here at least a year.  And we have some, a lot, that have been here since day one. We haven’t laid anybody off; we just kind of cut ourselves back and kind of took charge more in the kitchen [so] we, everybody could keep their job.  It’s worked out. 

VR: We make all our stuff in house.  We don’t have to go out there and buy the chopped lettuce, we chop it ourselves.  We don’t have to buy the sliced tomatoes, we slice them ourselves.  We make our own burgers so we don’t have to buy it already grinded up to where you have to pay that extra money to get it grinded, to get it sliced, to get it thised, to get it that. That’s what we do.

NR: Customer service.  Customer service.  Cleanliness, customer service, and good food.  You have to be on top of it.  You have to take care of people.  They’re coming here, they’re spending money in your establishment.  You give them what they want.  Make them feel at home as much as you can. 
Every [restaurant] is gonna get a first try.  The key is keeping them.  If you can keep them coming back, then you’ve done a good job.  So our key to our success is “family owned and family operated.”  We don’t have a manager that we leave it to and they do their own thing.  We have someone that watches the front for us, someone’s in the back in charge, but one of us [brothers] are always in here, so if there’s a problem we take care of it.  We don’t have a 1-800 number.  That’s the main thing.

VR: [We’d like to] have a bigger restaurant for a little banquet room at least so I can support all the football and baseball [teams] and all that, cause sometimes people call me up and I don’t have a banquet room for them. 
NR: We seat 95 people in here max and that’s with every chair filled. So a bigger place? Yes. More parking? Definitely! That’s been an issue here since day one here. Maybe the only resolution [is] building our own Brickhouse Diner on our own property. But that’s in the near future, hopefully.
The constant support of the area people is what’s keeping us here and we appreciate every day and every time they come in and I think they know it.

The Brickhouse Diner is located at 13520 Midlothian Turnpike. Open Monday-Saturday 7 a.m.-9 p.m., Sundays 7 a.m.- 2 p.m. For more information, call (804)794-8798.