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AUTUMN 2004 Dear Neighbors, We’re expecting! — And, again, it’s twins! We are always
excited to add to our little family of “purpose centered”
businesses, and we are anxious to share the news. Read on and you’ll see a piece clipped from The Business Journal
of the Triad about all of this. Plus, with the holidays just around
the corner, we’ll share some ideas about how we can help you “juggle
things” with “jingle bells” in the air. For instance,
we have private or semi-private dining for holiday parties at all of
our Lucky 32 restaurants, “Thanksgiving to Go” from the Green
Valley Grill, holiday event catering at the O.Henry, a “no-hassle”
way to get Q-W gift certificates and a real value for your out of town
guests at the O.Henry. Cheers! Dennis & Nancy King Quaintance Scroll down
to read our entire Neighborhood Letter or click the links below for
articles of interest... Private Dining at the O.Henry Hotel and Lucky 32
If you’re planning a party for the holidays, please consider having
it at the O.Henry Hotel. Whether
it’s an intimate gathering of 15 or a big bash of 150 (or something
in between), the O.Henry Hotel’s attentive staff, gracious amenities
and elegant banquet facilities will make your party a success. Contact
one of our Catering Consultants, Heather Tuttle or Leslie Dupuis, at
336-544-9615 or info@o.henryhotel.com
for more information about planning your party at the O.Henry Hotel.
Our Lucky 32 restaurants are also options for holiday gatherings. We
offer our full menu in our private and semi-private dining areas. Plus,
we also offer reservations, call-ahead seating and a pre-ordering service
that expedites service for larger parties. In North Raleigh our “Starlight
Room” seats up to 32 guests and in Cary our elegant semi-private
dining room seats up to 50. Our Greensboro Lucky’s private dining
room seats 8 – 10 and in Winston-Salem up to 40 guests can enjoy
semi-private dining. Call one of our General Managers (see below) for
more information or to make reservations, and visit lucky32.com
for our full menus. Cary, Chuck Tezekjian, 919-233-1632 The Business Journal of the Triad’s
reprint of their article about GREENSBORO - Let’s dispatch with the news first. The hospitality firm is planning a $20 million, eight- story, 150-room
hotel in Greensboro, tentatively called the Proximity Loft Hotel.
Rooms will be roughly 20 percent less expensive than the O. Henry (which
costs about $160 per night), and the restaurant will be smaller. But
that’s just the beginning. Dennis Quaintance, president of the firm, expects to have no
fewer than six more Proximity hotels in North Carolina within 15 years.
“If we can’t do that, we shouldn’t mess with it,”
he says. Quaintance hopes to build this new hotel near the O. Henry, but the
exact piece of land hasn’t been locked up yet. Regardless, the
best part of this story is understanding a little of how a $20 million
idea comes into being. It began one Sunday last spring, with Quaintance and his wife/business
partner, Nancy, walking briskly through their Fisher Park neighborhood.
They were lamenting the fact that after three years of trying to make
the numbers work, they had to give up on building an O. Henry in Raleigh.
Both were eager for another big project, so the question arose: where
is the hole in the hospitality market, not just Greensboro, but overall?
The highly creative, high-energy couple tends to generate more ideas
in a day than most of us do in a year. Soon, Nancy offered this gem
– let’s do for hotels what Target has done for shopping: offer
high-style and fashion in an affordable way. OK, but how? Nancy thought a moment more. People like renovated places.
Spacious, full of light. Let’s find a factory with big windows
and convert it into a hotel with loft-like sensibilities. “That’s it!” Dennis blurted out. His heart was racing,
as it often does. They dashed home and Dennis “No way are you going to find the right property in the right
location,” he says. So the idea quickly evolved: Build a hotel with spacious rooms, tall
ceilings, exposed ductwork and huge windows – and make it look
like it was once an old textile factory. The name helps some. Proximity
Cotton Mills once operated in Greensboro. “I’ve been thinking about adaptive re-use for years,”
Dennis says. “But it has to make sense. We have to be able to build
this for less than we built the O. Henry ($25 million).” The idea, however, wasn’t a go yet. In the unusual hierarchy of
the Quaintance-Weaver enterprise, few big decisions come top down. Instead,
Quaintance runs ideas past his top three management executives –
Will Stevens, Bart Ortiz and Jim Slowin. In order to encourage and nurture entrepreneurial instincts, the four
shift into “possibility mode.” Ideas are pitched without judgment.
The only feedback is positive, or none at all. Thus, crummy ideas die
a natural death, and no one gets embarrassed. “I drag them through the possibility phase,” Quaintance says.
“I can’t sing. I can’t dance. But I can get a three-dimensional
image in my mind. And I can see human beings walking through it and
the leadership systems that support it.” Still, Quaintance requires validation. He calls himself a “reluctant
entrepreneur” who always keeps an eye on the backdoor. He was prepared
for the loft hotel idea to die – if his managers didn’t embrace
it. “Dennis has put together a team that works for a set of values;
we don’t work for Dennis,” Stevens says. “We also all
have different traits. That’s important. Dennis throws out a lot
of ideas. A lot. We have to decide what’s a concept, a developable
idea or an action plan. “After all, we’re the ones who have to achieve what he envisions.
If we don’t buy into it, it’s not going to happen.” This loft hotel idea had legs. Quaintance knew it because at different
intervals, Stevens, Ortiz and Slowin would drop in and say, “I’ve
been thinking about that project and ...” Little by little, the concept grew into a plan. That’s when Quaintance
decided he was “willing to get $50,000 pregnant” before pulling
the trigger. Soon, a construction consultant and design engineers were hired to
do some rough pricing. A month ago, a consultant from Denver flew in
to do a market analysis. Later, the sales staff started talking to corporate
clients. The stars were lining up. This week, a formal design team meeting was held, complete with Centrepoint
Architecture from Raleigh. Quaintance says the property should be open
by mid-2006. He already envisions two in Charlotte and two in the Triangle.
Stevens can see two more in the Triad, and one each in Wilmington and
Hickory. Quaintance is fully aware that Proximity, in the short-run, will steal
customers from the O. Henry. That’s OK, he says. The city, while
saturated with limited-service hotels, has room for more full-service
properties. Plus, he’s placing a bet on the Triad’s future. Our restaurants won’t be open for regular business on Thanksgiving Day, but we’ve still got options for dinner if you’ll be in Greensboro. The Green Valley Grill will have Thanksgiving dinner ready for you to pick up, take home and enjoy. Place your order by 10:00 pm, Sunday, November 21, then stop by the Green Valley Grill on Thanksgiving Day to pick up your juicy, wood-fired, rotisserie-roasted turkey with all the trimmings, including sides, salads, bread and dessert. For more information or to place your order contact the Green Valley Grill at 336-854-2015 or visit greenvalleygrill.com. Thank You Neighbor! *Rate does not include tax, based on double occupancy, subject to availability, and valid only on the dates listed. Our gift certificates are (we say, not so humbly) wonderful holiday gifts. So wonderful, in fact, that we often have a line at the front desk in December. We’re thrilled, but we’re embarrassed when you have to wait. Our Gift Certificate Hotline helps with this issue. You can order gift certificates for all four Lucky’s, the Green Valley Grill or the O.Henry Hotel. We’ll take your credit card number and mail them to you promptly. This is not a sales pitch – we just want to help you avoid the holiday crunch by offering an option. Order online at qwrh.com or call 336-370-0966 and ask for the Gift Certificate Hotline.  Let
us help you find more time during the busy holiday season. You call, we
cook, then we bring your order right to your car. We especially like the
“Family Dinner” options and the “One Stop Wines” that
are priced low. For complete Get Lucky & Go menus visit lucky32.com
or just give us a call – phone numbers for all four locations are
on the back page.
Lucky’s Pimento Cheese We love this Southern classic (with a Lucky’s twist) on a toasted cheese sandwich, over a burger or topping a grilled chicken breast with bacon.
Add mayonnaise and lemon juice to a mixing bowl. Whisk with a wire whisk until well combined. Add grated cheddar cheese and diced roasted red peppers. Mix with a kitchen spoon until ingredients are evenly distributed. ©1989-2004 This recipe is property of Quaintance-Weaver, Inc. Unauthorized commercial use is forbidden. Every month or so our featured menus at Lucky 32 and the Green Valley Grill change to reflect the season. At Lucky 32 each menu features an American regional cuisine, while the Green Valley Grill features menus that are inspired by European regional recipes. Visit our Lucky 32 and Green Valley Grill websites for our upcoming featured menus. “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape
us.” |
Mr.
Jefferson would be tickled blush that he could get a “flight”
of wine to do his own “mini-tasting,” that all five of our
restaurants won the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, and that a recent
article in Greensboro’s News & Record said that the Green Valley
Grill had some of the best wine values in the area. (He would have surely
noted that Lucky 32 also has great deals on wine, including “Value-Priced”
wines on our Get Lucky & Go menu that would make a good many wine
merchants blush.)
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