THE FRONT

HOSPITALITY INHERITED

A Q&A WITH TRIO’S OWNER CAPI PECK.

In February, Trio’s owners Capi Peck and Brent Peterson won the 2022 Proprietor of the Year award from the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame. Peck and Peterson opened Trio’s in Pavilion in the Park in 1986. The restaurant won the Arkansas Times Readers Choice Awards for Best Restaurant in Central Arkansas six times. Peck is also serving her second term as a city director for Little Rock’s Ward 4. We caught up with Peck after a very busy Valentine’s Day at Trio’s.

Your grandparents owned Hotel Sam Peck and some of the menu items live on at Trio’s, like the Peck’s Special Salad. Is the Bing Cherry Jello Mold also a vintage recipe?

Oh, yes. I don’t think I would’ve come up with the idea of serving Jello in a restaurant in this century (laughs), but people love it and it’s not just women — women and men love it. It goes with the chicken salad. That’s straight from the hotel.

BRIAN CHILSON OK. I could talk forever about the disparity between the front of the house and the back of the house. The front of the house servers, it was Valentine’s Day last night, they all walked out with a couple hundred dollars cash in their pockets plus their paychecks, and it’s just not equitable. One way we try to address that is with a tip pool where everybody gets a cut. We got really aggressive with it during the pandemic because we morphed into curbside and delivery only for several months. We’ve maintained it, even if it means the restaurant having to supplement that to make it more equitable.

AGE: 69

FIRST RESTAURANT JOB OUTSIDE

THE HOTEL SAM PECK: Tracks Inn (at Union Station). It was a happening place in the ’70s.

What’s the biggest lesson you learned from your grandparents that you attribute to your success at Trio’s?

I would say to treat staff like they’re members of your family. I think that’s why we have so much longevity, so little turnover. We’ve got 10 people with 25 years plus and three or four who are in the 30 years plus range. My grandparents lived in the hotel, so it truly was their extended family, and so that whole hospitality gene I inherited, that’s my No. 1 takeaway. And not just staff, but customers and clients, too.

The restaurant landscape looks different after two years of a global pandemic. What’s going to be the most important thing that comes out of the pandemic for restaurant workers?

I think that unless we start paying people a living wage, we will have more and more trouble attracting new folks. I’m fully supportive of moving toward $15 an hour. Does that mean prices will have to go up? Yes. Do a lot of my colleagues freak out at the thought of a $15 minimum wage and hate me for it? Yes. But you know what, that’s

You’re in your second term on the board of directors for the city of Little Rock. How has running a restaurant prepared you for your role in city government?

I’m not a lifelong politician. I never dreamed of getting into politics. I represent my ward and the city the same way I run this restaurant. Be accessible and transparent, helpful and kind. Be ALWAYS IN HER FRIDGE: nice to people, just listen and help them naviVanilla yogurt, homemade hummus gate the bureaucracy. You might not be able to and orange juice. Not to be eaten get them the response they want, but you can together. be kind and try.

When we spoke in October of 2020 you’d just made the decision to close Sundays and give yourself a break. Could you talk about that decision and what your plans are for Trio’s as you’re closing in on your 40th year in business? Do you want to do this forever?

I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. It’s hard as hell and these last two years have been the hardest yet, but it’s still the most gratifying job I can imagine. If somebody chooses to come into Trio’s and spend money and let us pamper them and cook for them and nurture them, that’s huge and you get instant gratification when you go out and they say, “I love the voodoo pasta,” or, “This is the best key lime pie I’ve ever had.” You walk away just feeling great about a tiny little difference you’ve made in somebody’s daily experience. Profit margins are slim. It’s a tough business, but it’s so rewarding. I love it. I have no plans to retire. — Rhett Brinkley

TRAGICOMIC

ARKANSAS’S NATE POWELL DRAWS DOWN ON BOOK BANNERS.

Acclaimed graphic novelist and Central Arkansas native Nate Powell got smacked early by the recent book banning wave. In 2014, a school librarian passed on buying his National Book Award winner “March” out of fear that parents would complain. That Indiana middle school librarian’s reticence over a book about the universally beloved John Lewis clued Powell in to what’s become a raging national debate over what materials students should have access to in schools.

The drumbeat to ban books has only grown louder since those rumblings in 2014. In Arkansas, a number of new groups are attacking public libraries and pressuring schools to scrub their shelves of content on sexual development, LGBTQ issues, racism and gender identity.