Back in 2017 when we did our 150-day road trip across Canada, we met Steve Murphy while eating at the Blue Mussel Cafe in Prince Edward Island. Steve and his wife, Christine McQuaid, had just opened the restaurant after moving to PEI from the big city of Toronto. Steve was such a friendly guy and so in 2021 when we re-visited PEI, we were thrilled to eat at their new restaurant in Charlottetown, which also has some of the coolest guest rooms in the city. We actually had no idea it was their restaurant until we stepped inside and saw Steve, but once again, it really impressed us. So, we thought we'd invite him to share their story.

 

 

Prior to the restaurants, we both came from corporate backgrounds. Mine in corporate sales with one of my last positions as Executive Director of sales at 20th Century Fox in Canada and Christine as a Lab Technologist in a post sales / service role with a large medical equipment provider. In short, we were looking for a change from corporate life. Both of our jobs involved significant travel. In Christine’s case, she was on the road for about 40 weeks a year at one point. I had two kids that both lived with us at the time and they eventually got to a point that they were ready to move out on their own. This got Christine and I to ask

ourselves questions like “do you like what we are doing? Is there a better way to live?” 

 

I guess, in short, we were ready for a change and looking for the next challenge. We made the decision to make the move from Ontario but we weren’t sure where the next destination was. We focused on the process of downsizing first and then to be open to what was to come next. Christine’s family is from PEI and it was her father that suggested that we use the family farmhouse to enjoy PEI in the fall and to take sometime to slow down and relax. Not only was that great advice, there is no better place to take some time to relax and enjoy life than in PEI.

 

 

The longer Christine & I were taking some downtime in PEI the more we realized, that if

we could live anywhere in the world, why not PEI in the summer?! So we started to look

for businesses that would suit our backgrounds but kept coming up short. We looked at

Inn’s, gas stations, cottage rental businesses but none of them seemed like the right fit

for us. It was November 2013 and with about three weeks left in what we thought would be our PEI chapter, we had pretty much given up on the idea of living on PEI. That's when we

decided to go visit the National Park up in Cavendish. On our way there we ended up at

the very end of the North Rustico harbour right beside the lighthouse. As we pulled over

to turn around, we saw a ‘For Sale’ sign in the Blue Mussel Cafe window. We pulled the

car over, called the number on the sign, got the asking price and then asked ourselves,

“how hard is it to run a restaurant?” We later got the rude awakening to that answer but in the meantime, we thought, “why not?! This looks like the challenge that we were looking for!”

 

 

Blue Mussel Cafe is a seasonal restaurant that only operates from May long weekend til

mid October each year. The hardest part of a seasonal business is that it closes each

fall and with that you have to layoff the staff and hope they return next spring. We were about 5 years into running Blue Mussel Cafe and after 5 seasons of opening each spring & closing each fall we had started to figure out that the key to success in any restaurant is ‘consistent execution’ but we also learned that it takes a tremendous amount of resources to achieve just that. It takes a lot of mistakes, a lot of communication and a lot of time as a team building best practices in order to get a restaurant moving toward ‘consistent execution’. We found that we would just reach our stride each year by late summer / early fall, just in time to close for another season. By this point, we had invested a lot of time & energy into what had become a great core team that retuned each year. We realized that the longer they came back and the more staff that did so, the easier our start up would be each spring. So, I know that this will sound counter intuitive but in order to make our lives easier, we had to open a second restaurant that operated year-round. This way we could keep the core team together all year long.

 

We began our search for a new location in early 2018 and by late 2019 we had opened

Slaymaker & Nichols in Charlottetown. We found a beautiful 100+ year old house and

began converting it into what it is today, a GastroPub & Inn. We felt is was best to keep

the restaurant portion to just the main floor and use the rest of the building as a boutique 3 room inn. This way we could keep the restaurant portion small enough to keep our core staff employed all winter without overwhelming ourselves.

 

 

We didn’t know it at the time that we bought the house but the lot that this house was built on had a significant impact on Canada’s history. It was back in 1864, well before the house was built, that a travelling circus called Slaymaker & Nichols Olympic Circus set up a big white tent on the abandoned lot on the corner of Fitzroy & Queen. Timing was significant as they launched the circus at the same time that our founding fathers were just beginning their meetings about a block away. It has been said that the founding fathers took long breaks from the meetings to enjoy the festive atmosphere of the circus and while taking in these acts along with a few glasses of wine the founding fathers bonded enough to set aside all differences when the got back to meeting again and thus our country was formed. It wasn’t until 1912 that John Messervy built his family home on that very same lot. When deciding on the decor, Christine really wanted to not only pay homage to the family home, which was so well preserved, but to also tell the circus story and play up on the festive & welcoming atmosphere that the circus must have provided. As you would have noticed when staying here, there is combination of influences of circus romance combined with historic colours tied to the age of the house and a touch of art deco.

 

 

PEI is known as ‘Canadas Food Island’ and there are probably more restaurants per capita here than anywhere else in the country. With the ability to source fresh locally grown foods along with a leading culinary institute, there are a lot of really great restaurants on our little island and we strive to try and be at the top of that list every day. As I mentioned before, we truly believe that we have great teams at both restaurants. However, we know that even if you had the best concept with the best food ideas, along with solid best practices, it still takes a team to ‘consistently execute’ everyday to make those building blocks come to life. We start everyday on building and maintaining the best team that we can along with a very strong focus on ‘consistent execution’. Even with the best laid plans, there are a lot of moving parts in a restaurant and therefore, a lot of decisions that need to be made on the fly. One of the things we talk about as a team almost everyday is “what is the impact on the guest?”. With every idea that is brought forth and the reinforcement behind every decision that gets made on the fly is to ask ourselves, “what impact does this have on the guest experience and how does this ensure that we are executing to our best with every dish and every guest experience?” So, in short, our focus is simple inside of a very complex & ever changing industry. Build the best team you can, focus on the guest and do your best to deliver the same experience to everyone that comes through that door.

 

You can see both the Slaymaker & Nichols restaurant and guest rooms in our latest video about Charlottetown.