Smithfield restaurant owner quickly shifts gears during pandemic

By Randy Capps

Being a small business owner is a roller coaster ride in the best of times. Being one in the midst of a global pandemic is like riding Space Mountain without a seat belt.

Blake Gotliffe, of Under the Oak Restaurant and Catering, has been hanging on with both hands in 2020, and that determination has earned him the 2020 Johnston Now Honors Dynamic Entrepreneur award.

When the first executive order came down in March, Gotliffe found himself in need of a Plan B.

“We immediately made a big change back when they shut down restaurants,” he said. “Given our style of food, we relied a lot on destination diners that come from Clayton and Raleigh, not necessarily just Smithfield. When everything shut down, I knew that take out wasn’t going to be a viable option for us.

“So we switched over to doing a prepared meal service, which I started my business doing four years ago — cooking for a few families in Raleigh. Cooking their weekly meals. It just so happens that I still had it on my website. It was just kind of hidden in a menu. I just updated that, changed some things and it was ready to go in a few days.

“It’s not your everyday prepackaged meal that you’d get in the grocery store. Right now, we offer two really big grilled pork chops with the jalapeno peach chutney. The menu’s changing with the season, so before, we did our bacon bourbon sauce with it. We have a stuffed meatloaf, which is grass-fed beef and Italian sausage stuffed with mushrooms and provolone cheese. It has a marinara sauce and romano cheese on top, like an Italian-style meatloaf.”

There are also vegetarian options, hibachi and much more. Even with the good response and wide selection, another solution was required at the end of May.

“(The meal service) went really well,” he said. “We had tremendous support from our regulars in the community. As restaurants were able to slowly reopen, it started dropping off a little bit. But, at the same time, you started seeing all the food supply issues nationwide. Given that 90 percent of our ingredients are from North Carolina and small farms, that didn’t really affect us at all.

“We were able to continue to provide fresh produce, pasteurized meats, chicken — everything you couldn’t find in stores I could still get from the small local farmers.” In addition to his culinary talents, Gotliffe is also a trained butcher. That allows him to offer steaks, beef, chicken, pork and top-quality deli meats.

While pivoting to and from various aspects of his business plan, Under the Oak Restaurant and Catering also took time to help combat food insecurity for school children in Smithfield.

“It’s always been a passion of mine to give back to the community where I can,” Gotliffe said. “With school lunches providing so much food for low-income families that literally rely on that to eat, I saw a need there where I thought I could help out. With our grocery option, we started with you buy one meal and we provide four. We take the money from a person buying one meal, and we produce four of them and give them to families in need. We hooked up with a liaison at West and South Smithfield Elementary Schools, so she worked directly with those families.”

The restaurant, which has pretty much been closed since March, is planning to reopen for dinner this month. To get ready, Gotliffe offered some ticketed dinners, including one featuring prime rib in September.

“We wanted to kind of ease our way back into the restaurant service,” he said. “We’re allowed to reopen, but I’m trying to do it as safely as possible. With a ticketed dinner with limited seats, we know exactly who’s coming. They buy a ticket that explains all of the guidelines as far as entering the building. It seemed to me to be the safest way.

“We had a lot of customers who were really ready for us to reopen, and this was the way to not only do it safely, but also control our costs. There’s a lot of gambling in the restaurant business, especially in times like this when you don’t know if you’re going to be busy. You have to purchase food, you’ve got to prep it and, if you’re not busy, you’re wasting it. Doing these ticketed events, I know exactly how much to prepare, so there’s zero waste. Except for whatever I eat. I’m not complaining about prime rib.”

It’s not all meat and veggies at Under the Oak, either.

“My wife (Megan) is a large part of the business,” he said. “She does amazing deserts, and we just started offering her homemade ice creams. She’s a phenomenal pastry chef, and an extremely talented cake decorator. So, she’s got cakes, wedding cakes. Pretty much anything sweet. If you name it, she can make it.”

It’s been a team effort, but the Gotliffe family is pressing on.

“It’s been a lot of long hours for sure,” he said. “I feel really blessed that we had such strong support right out of the gate,” he said. “That gave me the confidence to keep it up. For a lot of people, it’s really hard when they shut down your restaurant and you’re just trying to do takeout and you’re not paying your bills. ... You put your life into that business and to then have something like that slap you in the face and slow you down, it was a few sleepless nights. A lot of questioning of myself, but I feel very fortunate that we’ve made the right decisions and kept going.”