O PE N TH AT B OT TLE
...with Stephen Reid BY LINDA GARSON PHOTO BY JACLYN BROWN
“I
only have one job, and my job is standards. If we don’t hit this standard, we will be pummelled by our competition, and our customers will not leave happy,” says Stephen Reid, CEO of the Creative Restaurant Group. Born in Oshawa, Reid grew up in Kitchener-Waterloo, and studied business at Wilfred Laurier University, before heading west in the early ‘80s. By fluke, he met a restaurant building company who were struggling, and completely turned it around, building numerous nightclubs, restaurants, and lounges for hotel chains. Eventually he was persuaded to run a restaurant, and teamed up with Clay Riddell of “Arguably the most successful oil and gas family in Canadian history.” “I had a dream I was going to build the next Keg chain,” Reid laughs. He learned from a historian in Lethbridge who knew the history of ranch cuisine in Alberta and, in 1988, opened the first of three Billy McIntyre’s Cattle Company locations, a home cooking, gourmet, Alberta steakhouse. “They were very popular, profitable restaurants,” he says. “We ran them between the two of us because it was a hobby business. We liked the people, and we liked the social side. And at the same time, we invested in private companies.” That led to 4th Street Rose, Wildwood, Bonterra, and Catch. “We went on to open 4th Spot, and Spot On Kitchen,” he adds. “We bought Loco Lou’s, and the Rose and Crown in Banff 25 years ago, and it’s still the busiest bar and pub in Banff.” Good accounting is a priority for Reid, and anyone who handles money goes
42 Culinaire | March 2020
to accounting school. “If you don’t pay attention to every nickel, you lose all profitability. Everyone on our team knows exactly where they stand on a daily basis, and we keep it down to five minutes a day.” Eager to learn about successful interiors, Reid spent a weekend with Pat Kuleto, of San Francisco’s Boulevard Restaurant. He learned about architecture and why lighting is so important—and ate
“We added Cibo because young people need to learn about Italian food, so it’s beginner Italian and reasonably priced.” great Italian food, deciding him to build an Italian restaurant. When it became available, the site had a grandfathered courtyard patio, and Bonterra was born. “We love Italian, and we added Posto beside it. We added Cibo because young people need to learn about Italian food, so it’s beginner Italian and reasonably priced,” Reid explains. “We need to keep listening to customers to give them more of what they want. There is no second place, it has to be the best you’ve ever had.” When Irvine Weitzman, president of
Mill Street Brewery, was looking to build a brewery, Reid offered him all his resources as he does to anyone who knocks at his door, and gave him realtors’ names, locations, maps... “We became friends, and he said, “we make really good beer and you make really good food. Why don’t we do this together?’” And his latest venture in Kensington, Free House, is now open too. So what bottle is Reid saving for a special occasion? “It’s a bottle of Cristal 2004, which was a vintage year and 100 point Wine Spectator year. I had two 1.5 litre bottles given to me for doing someone a favour in the finance world, 10 years ago,” says Reid. “We cracked one at Christmas, and it was absolutely delicious. We put it out in deep snow for two hours, and Chris, (Bonterra’s chef), was making all kinds of antipasti, and we devoured a bunch of small plates—and that bottle, which I thought would last for a long time, was drunk pretty fast by eight enthusiasts,” he laughs. “I don’t want to keep this bottle for 10 years. I’m willing to drink it next Christmas because it’s at the peak of the drinking cycle.”
