FACES AT THE DOOR Six months ago, David Kim, 58, an immigrant
from South Korea, bought the Park View Diner in Fairview from a
Greek immigrant who owned it for 25 years.
from South Korea, bought the Park View Diner in Fairview from a
Greek immigrant who owned it for 25 years.
Diners in Changing Hands; Greek
Ownership on the Wane
By JOSEPH BERGER
Ownership on the Wane
By JOSEPH BERGER
NICK KARKAMBASIS arrived in New York City from Sparta, Greece,
on Dec. 22, 1968, when he was 16 years old. By Dec. 24 he was
working as a dishwasher at his uncle’s Delta Diner in Massapequa
on Long Island.
He moved up by taking a traditional path of Greek immigrants —
dishwasher, busboy, short-order cook, waiter — until he mastered
the full menu of diner routines and squirreled away enough money
to buy his own in 1988. In 1995 he graduated to the Yorktown Coach
Diner, a plain-spoken brick stand-alone in a shopping mall here. Its
typical diner touches include stainless steel streamlining, faux
Tiffany lamps and a display case that shows off cheesecakes tall
enough to cast a shadow.
Like other diner owners, Mr. Karkambasis has worked 16 hours a
day, six days a week, not just making sure the food is tasty but also
acting like something of a convivial Rick in a cafe far from
Casablanca, making the guests feel at home with his patter.
But Mr. Karkambasis, like many others in the business, foresees the
end of a chapter in American restaurant history — the ownership of
a large share of diners by Greek immigrants. The son and daughter
he put through college have become Wall Street traders and are not
interested in the long workdays and hurried vacations his job entails.
Meanwhile, the immigration pipeline from Greece that peaked
between the 1950s and 1970 has dried up as Greece has
prospered. Mr. Karkambasis’ current staff of 23 hails mostly from
South America.
All that is not to mention what Peter Makrias, publisher-editor of a
magazine for the Greek-American food industry, says are the two
most insidious forces wiping such diners off the map — the banks
and chain drugstores that are buying up those enviable roadside
locations and the competition from franchise restaurants.
Mr. Karkambasis, who at 56 is thinking about retirement, is luckier
than most. He has a son-in-law, Konstantinos Moissiadis, a graphics
designer for I.B.M., who started out at 18 working at an uncle’s diner
in Norwalk, Conn., and likes the business. But Mr. Karkambasis, who
is also a director of a New York purchasing co-op of 437 diners,
estimates that the proportion of Greek-owned diners in the New
York, New Jersey and Connecticut region has declined in 10 years
to 70 percent from 90 percent.
“To tell you the truth, the parents don’t want their children to go into
the business,” Mr. Karkambasis said. “It’s a lot of hours, and most of
us don’t want our children going through what we went through
growing up.”
The Park View Diner in Fairview was sold roughly six months ago to
Korean owners. The Broadway Diner, a streamlined and
Hopperesque throwback in Yonkers, is now owned by an immigrant
from Bangladesh. The Parkside Diner in Yonkers was rebuilt a year
ago as part of the homespun Malecon chain of four Dominican
chicken and rice-and-beans restaurants. In Paramus, along Route 4,
the Forum Diner building is about to become a Jeep dealership.
A sharper decline is looming, said Bill Kapas, one of the largest
diner brokers, as the generation of Greek immigrants that founded
more than 600 diners in the New York region retires. Mr. Kapas, 38,
is the son of a Greek immigrant.
Greeks say they have cultivated a geniality that has worked well in
24-hour restaurants, where people often show up just to while away
the time. They do well both with peckish Broadway nighthawks
craving a nosh or teenagers testing their parents’ tolerance for
staying out late. Owners like Mr. Karkambasis seem especially
attuned to the idiosyncrasies of midday customers like Stan and Kay
Rose of Yorktown, an elderly couple who drop by for lunch at his
diner three or four times a week.
“We sat down and they knew us, and they had a tea on the table for
us — we didn’t have to order,” said Mr. Rose, nibbling on a tuna on
toast. “If Nick is gone, the whole flavor of the place will change.”
At 71, Elias Spyrocoulos, the co-owner of the Executive diner, in
Hawthorne in Westchester County, has a pacemaker and is getting
tired of the stress that comes with running the restaurant. He has
begun looking for a buyer.
The business has been good to him. He arrived in the United States
with $2 in his pocket as a 19-year-old from a family of seven children
who lived in the olive-growing region around Kalamata. Unlike some
other diner owners, he did not jump ship.
“Everybody was saying the money is easy in America and as a
young fellow you don’t realize what’s ahead,” he said.
The diner, which he owns with a partner and fellow Greek immigrant,
Dee Pappas, 67, helped put two of his three children through
college and let him meet many interesting people, “from the smallest
to the highest ones.” Those, he proudly said, included celebrities
like Peter Jennings and Howard Cosell, who stopped for breakfast
on their way to work.
“You get up in the morning and you look forward to the customers,”
he said. “That makes me happy.”
In his heyday, Mr. Spyrocoulos was in the diner from 8 a.m. to 11 p.
m., and none of his three children want to emulate that incessant
responsibility. Diner owners say that while the business can gross
$25,000 a week or more, it involves countless headaches, starting
with the challenges of supplying dictionary-size menus that might
include matzo ball soup and Hungarian goulash and sustaining a
reliable, polyglot staff.
“Every day you’re going to have somebody not show up,” said
Aristides Garganourakis, 57, owner of the Dobbs Diner in Dobbs
Ferry. “You have to have emergency workers, and that’s your family.”
Nick Karkambasis predicts that diners will increasingly be taken over
by immigrants from other countries now toiling as waiters and cooks.
“What happened with Greeks is happening right now with South
Americans,” he said.
Still, pessimists feel that the flavor Greeks have brought to diners will
one day pass into memory. Mr. Garganourakis puts it bluntly: “When
Greeks get out of diners, there will no more be diners.”
on Dec. 22, 1968, when he was 16 years old. By Dec. 24 he was
working as a dishwasher at his uncle’s Delta Diner in Massapequa
on Long Island.
He moved up by taking a traditional path of Greek immigrants —
dishwasher, busboy, short-order cook, waiter — until he mastered
the full menu of diner routines and squirreled away enough money
to buy his own in 1988. In 1995 he graduated to the Yorktown Coach
Diner, a plain-spoken brick stand-alone in a shopping mall here. Its
typical diner touches include stainless steel streamlining, faux
Tiffany lamps and a display case that shows off cheesecakes tall
enough to cast a shadow.
Like other diner owners, Mr. Karkambasis has worked 16 hours a
day, six days a week, not just making sure the food is tasty but also
acting like something of a convivial Rick in a cafe far from
Casablanca, making the guests feel at home with his patter.
But Mr. Karkambasis, like many others in the business, foresees the
end of a chapter in American restaurant history — the ownership of
a large share of diners by Greek immigrants. The son and daughter
he put through college have become Wall Street traders and are not
interested in the long workdays and hurried vacations his job entails.
Meanwhile, the immigration pipeline from Greece that peaked
between the 1950s and 1970 has dried up as Greece has
prospered. Mr. Karkambasis’ current staff of 23 hails mostly from
South America.
All that is not to mention what Peter Makrias, publisher-editor of a
magazine for the Greek-American food industry, says are the two
most insidious forces wiping such diners off the map — the banks
and chain drugstores that are buying up those enviable roadside
locations and the competition from franchise restaurants.
Mr. Karkambasis, who at 56 is thinking about retirement, is luckier
than most. He has a son-in-law, Konstantinos Moissiadis, a graphics
designer for I.B.M., who started out at 18 working at an uncle’s diner
in Norwalk, Conn., and likes the business. But Mr. Karkambasis, who
is also a director of a New York purchasing co-op of 437 diners,
estimates that the proportion of Greek-owned diners in the New
York, New Jersey and Connecticut region has declined in 10 years
to 70 percent from 90 percent.
“To tell you the truth, the parents don’t want their children to go into
the business,” Mr. Karkambasis said. “It’s a lot of hours, and most of
us don’t want our children going through what we went through
growing up.”
The Park View Diner in Fairview was sold roughly six months ago to
Korean owners. The Broadway Diner, a streamlined and
Hopperesque throwback in Yonkers, is now owned by an immigrant
from Bangladesh. The Parkside Diner in Yonkers was rebuilt a year
ago as part of the homespun Malecon chain of four Dominican
chicken and rice-and-beans restaurants. In Paramus, along Route 4,
the Forum Diner building is about to become a Jeep dealership.
A sharper decline is looming, said Bill Kapas, one of the largest
diner brokers, as the generation of Greek immigrants that founded
more than 600 diners in the New York region retires. Mr. Kapas, 38,
is the son of a Greek immigrant.
Greeks say they have cultivated a geniality that has worked well in
24-hour restaurants, where people often show up just to while away
the time. They do well both with peckish Broadway nighthawks
craving a nosh or teenagers testing their parents’ tolerance for
staying out late. Owners like Mr. Karkambasis seem especially
attuned to the idiosyncrasies of midday customers like Stan and Kay
Rose of Yorktown, an elderly couple who drop by for lunch at his
diner three or four times a week.
“We sat down and they knew us, and they had a tea on the table for
us — we didn’t have to order,” said Mr. Rose, nibbling on a tuna on
toast. “If Nick is gone, the whole flavor of the place will change.”
At 71, Elias Spyrocoulos, the co-owner of the Executive diner, in
Hawthorne in Westchester County, has a pacemaker and is getting
tired of the stress that comes with running the restaurant. He has
begun looking for a buyer.
The business has been good to him. He arrived in the United States
with $2 in his pocket as a 19-year-old from a family of seven children
who lived in the olive-growing region around Kalamata. Unlike some
other diner owners, he did not jump ship.
“Everybody was saying the money is easy in America and as a
young fellow you don’t realize what’s ahead,” he said.
The diner, which he owns with a partner and fellow Greek immigrant,
Dee Pappas, 67, helped put two of his three children through
college and let him meet many interesting people, “from the smallest
to the highest ones.” Those, he proudly said, included celebrities
like Peter Jennings and Howard Cosell, who stopped for breakfast
on their way to work.
“You get up in the morning and you look forward to the customers,”
he said. “That makes me happy.”
In his heyday, Mr. Spyrocoulos was in the diner from 8 a.m. to 11 p.
m., and none of his three children want to emulate that incessant
responsibility. Diner owners say that while the business can gross
$25,000 a week or more, it involves countless headaches, starting
with the challenges of supplying dictionary-size menus that might
include matzo ball soup and Hungarian goulash and sustaining a
reliable, polyglot staff.
“Every day you’re going to have somebody not show up,” said
Aristides Garganourakis, 57, owner of the Dobbs Diner in Dobbs
Ferry. “You have to have emergency workers, and that’s your family.”
Nick Karkambasis predicts that diners will increasingly be taken over
by immigrants from other countries now toiling as waiters and cooks.
“What happened with Greeks is happening right now with South
Americans,” he said.
Still, pessimists feel that the flavor Greeks have brought to diners will
one day pass into memory. Mr. Garganourakis puts it bluntly: “When
Greeks get out of diners, there will no more be diners.”