Final-Go-Round Supper Club and Rieker’s Gourmet Blend
Mott, North Dakota
Just about in the middle of nowhere — surrounded by sweeping grasslands abundant with pheasant and a few roving cowboys tending their herd of cattle – the Final-Go-Round Supper Club just outside Mott, North Dakota, ropes in hungry homesteaders, ranchers and pheasant hunters alike who stake claim that its owners, Larry and Rachael Rieker, serve up some of the best prime rib in the nation. With seating for about sixty, the white tablecloth and napkins, candlelit tabletops, impeccable service and cozy atmosphere of the restaurant are both a contrast to the rugged terrain outside – and the perfect backdrop for the culinary feasts. Recognized by Travelocity as its 2005 Top Insider Spot, Final-Go-Round Supper Club represents rural businesses who operate on the simple philosophy: if we develop a reputation for quality, customers will drive. And for closet chefs, Larry’s secret blends of spices, branded as sixteen distinctive Rieker’s Gourmet Blend dry and liquid sauces, can be found at regional grocery stores and helps the family business diversify income while broadening its marketing reach.
“I got tired of eating out all the time,” jokes Larry, a self-trained chef who has spent hours dining in some of Seattle, Washington’s finest restaurants when he was a construction superintendent. “Every chance I had, I’d go back into the kitchen to talk with the chefs to learn about their culinary techniques and collect their best recipes, if they were willing to share them. I also grew tired of the big city, being on the telephone all the time. I was concerned for the safety of my family,” continues Larry, who in 1986 decided leave an established career behind and move back to his hometown in South Dakota with his wife Rachel, and her two kids. She had been an accountant for the same construction company he worked for. Like the pioneers a hundred years before him, Larry knew he needed to start his own business to make a successful go of it. “When you move back to the rural Dakotas, the first thing you leave behind is a paycheck.”
It’s Larry’s do-it-yourself, self-reliant spark of independence — common among those who a raised in rural plains states — that would come to serve him well when he decided to move back to where he grew up in Morristown, South Dakota, about 60 miles south of his present-day version of the Final-Go-Round Supper Club in Mott. He took over his mother’s Rocky Ridge Bar & Grill, part bar and part convenience store and joined the growing number of people who are returning to their rural roots, seeking to do more of what they love and create a better and safer place to raise a family. Rachael joined him two years later with her two kids.
Sometimes it takes a construction superintendent who is willing to do crafts to recreate something new. “By 1993, we realized we needed to get out of the convenience store side of the business, since the community was in decline and the remaining locals, fewer than 100, tended to do most of their shopping when in the bigger cities,” explains Larry. “So we auctioned $40,000 worth of groceries for $4,000 and turned the grocery store area into our first rendition of the Final-Go-Round Supper Club. We spent days renovating on limited budgets, using local barn wood, telephone poles and lots of sparkly glitter to resemble the star studded skies to create a rodeo décor for the restaurant, complete with roping boxes, stalls and corral panels.” The name the Final-Go-Round was inspired by Larry’s fond memories of going to rodeos with his father and a tribute to the cowboys who made it into the final round the National Finals Rodeo. “It was our final round to serve our rural area,” admits Larry in earnest.
And it worked. Larry’s passion for cooking and Rachael’s penchant for convivial service attracted patrons from hundreds of miles away who came for their prime rib, steaks, fish and other seafood. “Our goal has always been to serve great food with good service,” says Larry. “People will come if we do it right, since area residents and hunters that arrived each year couldn’t get a good steak or meal within a fifty mile radius. I didn’t put anything on the menu until I mastered it.”
The early years were tough, but prosperous. They lived with their family out of the back of the bar and every Sunday afternoon, they washed 150 tablecloths and 250 napkins. To keep labor costs down in the early years, they successfully managed to split the kitchen and table service between each other without needing to hire extra help. Larry uses local produce when available seasonally, including peppers, garlic and tomatoes from local patrons, including some produce from the sheriff’s personal garden. “Since I have lots of special orders and large volume for North Dakota from food service restaurant distributors, I have no problem getting the choice quality cuts and flash frozen meats I require,” says Larry. “For the best preparation and taste, however, the secret is my technique for defrosting the meats and seafood.”
Since most waitstaff and kitchen help were unfamiliar with a fine dining establishment, Larry and Rachael found it easy to train them. “We explain why we do it our way, or why we don’t do it at all,” admits Larry. “While there’s naturally some turnover with the high school young people we hire in the kitchen, most of our permanently part-time waitstaff never leave us. Many have other jobs, too.”
Word of mouth accolades for the mouth-watering steaks, seafood and poultry spread like wildfire, cowboy to cowboy, hunter to hunter, local resident to resident. Despite the lack of a printed menu for the first year or so, business boomed. “Cliff Naylor from KFYR-TV 5 out of Bismarck came to do his Off the Beaten Path show on us,” chuckles the good-natured Larry. “We were going bonkers, throwing steaks in a kitchen no more than eight-foot by twenty-foot.” Giving generous credit to his wife, he adds, “My wife is a hard worker. She runs the show on the floor of the restaurant, greeting new customers, visiting with repeat patrons. I visit each of the tables and make an effort to get to know everyone, so I know who likes their hashbrowns crispy or have a different way of viewing medium rare steaks. I can serve 50,000 great steaks, but if I serve one bad one, it’s that one that gives our place a bad reputation.”
“I give Larry a lot of credit for following his dream,” compliments Rachael. “With no other help in the kitchen, Larry can cook for a hundred people during one dinner seating, but still have the time to visit each table and make the time to insure that everything was just right.” In the off-season, patrons might anticipate the gregarious chef to pull up a chair tableside to share one of his many lively stories. Many enjoy the one about how he negotiated his Hawaiian barbeque ribs recipe.
As the population continued its slide in Morristown to below fifty residents, Larry and Rachael set their sights on an opportunity to reopen an existing and much larger supper club outside Mott with a larger kitchen and a little closer to their regular customers. The hard decision to close the restaurant in South Dakota and move north 60 miles in 2005 meant they were still rural, but closer to the interstate to draw more customers. Morristown was on the very edge of human settlement — nothing but vast ranches and Native American reservations to the south meant their customer base was limited.
“Everyone has to work together in these small towns,” says Larry, referring to their new location in Mott, widely known among hunters as the “Pheasant Capital of the United States.” “Our town is trying to figure out how to help everyone out and create opportunities so everyone can make a little money.” By re-opening up a new fine dining restaurant, Larry wanted to serve an audience while not competing with other restaurants in the area. His approach reflects the broader renewal taking place in rural areas where entrepreneurs are infusing money, ideas and creativity to reinvigorate everything from old restaurants and theaters to bed & breakfasts and retail shops.
“The pheasant hunting season provides the cash flow that carries us through the slower season,” admits Larry, referring to the ability of the area to draw hunters from around the world every October and November to go pheasant hunting. “What our area is marketing is ‘nothing,'” jokes Larry. “What we have most of is nothing but wide open space.” This space, however, offers habitat for bountiful populations of pheasants and has attracted the likes of retired NBA-star Dave Gambi and the Governor of North Dakota, both of whom have savored a meal at the Final-Go-Round. “But it’s our local customers who carry us year round,” adds Larry proudly.
“Then we started in on these spices,” chimes in Rachael with a big grin, referring to Rieker’s Gourmet Blend, a line of gourmet spices for seasoning steaks, chops, poultry, lamb, fish, vegetables, even garlic bread. “I don’t know how we found the time for it with the restaurant,” laughs Rachael, who came up with the idea to help defray unanticipated and dauntingly large family medical expenses. In 2000, the Final-Go-Round Supper Club embarked on blending and bottling their own line of spices under the brand, Rieker’s Gourmet Blend. “It was our Rieker’s Gourmet Blend spice line that helped boost our profits and helped get us out of debt from unanticipated healthcare costs,” adds Larry. Margins in the restaurant business are notoriously narrow, so the new specialty foods product line capitalized both on the years of Larry’s restaurant experience and the ability to outsource the blending and packaging of Rieker’s Gourmet Blend.
“Great chefs use great spices” reads the slogan on the bottom of each of the sixteen different dry and liquid containers displayed on the rack at the entrance of the restaurant – and sold throughout the United States at specialty spice retailers, grocery stores and supermarkets, and direct through their website. “We used to mix the spices by hand on Sunday evenings, after the linen laundry was done,” laughs Larry. “Now we contract out the blending of the spices and the bottling.”
“For years, we went around trying to get grocery stories and retailers to pick up our products,” explains Larry. “People are good about buying home state products. We learned as we went. If it were not for computers and 800 numbers, we might have gone broke. Ultimately, however, we picked up a distributor for our products, since we also had the restaurant.” The upstart specialty product business not only helped pay off the hospital bills, it helped diversify their operations and demonstrated the economic viability and feasibility of subcontracting out production, packaging and marketing from a remote small town. Today, Rieker’s Gourmet Blend is featured in over a hundred outlets. The business has sales through 150 accounts in addition to on-line sales. “If I’d do it over again, I’d just spend $2,000 to $3,000 on a website and Internet search engines and sell direct to my customers,” admits Larry.
The Final-Go-Round Supper Club’s big city service and quality meals proves that location isn’t everything. Sometimes it’s the off-the-beaten path place that adds just the right blend of spices that draws customers from hundreds of miles around. And the Final-Go-Round Supper Club has definitely clinched the finals, at least in this region of southwestern North Dakota. And for a bottle or jar of Rieker’s Gourmet Blend, it’s just a click away on the Internet.