Editor's Note: General Manager for Arabella’s Landing Marina, John Moist, released the following letter regarding the closure of Red Rooster Cafe to Patch on Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013:
My name is John Moist and I have been the General Manager for Arabella’s Landing Marina, owned by Stan and Judy Stearns, for ten years. This year Arabella’s celebrates our 19th year in business as the premier destination marina in the south Puget Sound. Located on the property are four spaces for lease. The Red Rooster location is one of the four. I am positive that if you ask the other tenants they will tell you what fair and honest people the Stearns are. While we dislike engaging in he said she said dialogue, we feel that it is time to put an end to the untruths and false accusations spilling forth from social media comments regarding the closure of the Red Rooster Café and Collectables.
On December 28, 2012 Miss Jamie Radcliffe, owner the Red Rooster Café and Collectibles, was presented with a letter written by me, without written benefit of council on behalf of Stan and Judy Stearns and Arabella’s Landing Marina, revoking her lease effective January 1, 2013 due to non-payment of rent. The amount due was in excess of $23,000.00. Of that amount $15,600.00 was deferred for the period August 2010 through June 2011 in order to give her time to build her business. She was required to repay that amount from receipts during the summer months when business should be excellent. Additionally, Mr. Stearns loaned Miss Radcliffe the sum of $11,000.00 to purchase equipment and food. All of these sums were detailed in her lease agreement and agreed to and signed by Miss Radcliffe.
In late October Miss Radcliffe came to me and asked us to give her until the end of the year before evicting her. Miss Radcliffe was aware that winter was upon her and she would be unable to pay her full rent as occurred in 2010 and 2011. I passed this request along to Mr. Stearns. Mr. Stearns told me numerous times, over the nearly two and a half years, that he simply did not want her to fail and was willing to gave her every opportunity to succeed but now enough was enough. Anymore and his support and benevolence would turn into a very poor business decision.
Of the 29 months Miss Radcliffe’s Lease Agreement was in effect Mr. Stearns deferred payments for a total of 11 months. Miss Radcliffe paid monthly invoices in their entirety a total of 4 times and she paid in excess of the monthly invoices 4 times for a total overpayment of $2,208.00. Of course this overpayment total went towards the months she was short or paid nothing. The bottom line is Miss Radcliffe failed to pay her invoices in full a total of 10 out of 18 months.
The letter that I presented to Miss Radcliffe on December 28, 2012 was a “settlement agreement.” In return for her walking away from the business in an orderly manner, leaving everythingbehind except for her roosters to include leaving the space clean she would be forgiven her debt of more than $34,000.00. Miss Radcliffe said no to the offer.
There is no intent on the part of Arabella’s Landing Marina to lease the retail space to any third party who wants to reopen the Red Rooster Café. Since December 28, 2012 Miss Radcliffe and/or her friends have been seen removing items from the restaurant. In addition, a walk through inspection on December 31, 2012 revealed the space to be filthy.
These numbers were taken from QuickBooks and are to the best of my knowledge accurate.
It is my hope that this statement puts to rest any and all thoughts that the Stearns are anything but honest hard working people who care deeply about the future of Gig Harbor.
John Moist, January 5, 2013
Then the property manager posted complete lies and denied what they had done as well as their plans to keep the restaurant open as the Red Rooster. It appears to me that she wanted to share the truth with the community. Can you blame her? Really? Although I don't know her personally, from what I have heard by many locals, this woman was clearly strong armed by the owner and his manager, but was smart enough not to comply with their unethical requests. Doesn't appear to be any finger pointing in her blog. Just documents proving how sick and heartless the owners of Arabella's landing truly are. It's awful that in such a beautiful community that people like this are among those of us who have morals. I hope she does open someplace else!
Take your lies somewhere else and stop trying to make this woman look bad. The only one who looks bad is you and the jerks who pulled this unethical crap in the first place. The smartest thing that could have been done here would have been for Stan Stearns to have kept the Red Rooster open with the original owner and watched it continue to grow. It would have been far better for his already damaged reputation within the city of Gig Harbor. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! Go Seahawks!
The owner, Mr. Stearns' reputation as a kind and generous man doesn't fit with a 3 day eviction of a single mother and with no regard for the employees.... It is not for me to judge why this business is being closed, only why there was no reasonable and fair consideration for this young woman, who had poured her heart and soul into her dream of owning her own business and for her staff of people who depended on their paychecks for survival.
THE SIGNS ARE DOWN, SHE'S LOCKED OUT, AND IT'S OVER FOR THE DEAD ROOSTER! Amen to that, bitches!
Ok, I have tried this place SEVERAL times. I really like to see local restaurants succeed so I have been generous with my visits to this place since the day it opened. On our first visit, my veggie sandwich was a soggy mess and it took about and hour to get to my table. With a bag of chips and can of Coke. Gross! The second visit I had a sandwich that had ONE, and I mean ONE deli slice of turkey on it. Are you kidding me?! I won't go on as to the other visits except for the last time I was in there. I wanted to grab a quick latte to-go and when I walked in, the cafe smelled disgusting. I couldn't even stay in there to order a drink. A combination of garbage and dirty laundry.
To end this review, all I can say is where is Gordon Ramsey and Kitchen Nightmares? This place needs you! ***UPDATE*** Based on the owner's response, I'm not sure this place is taking into account the cumulative response here on http://yelp.com. There are several bad reviews. As a former restaurant manager, I definitely know what I am talking about. Just be glad I didn't write a review for every time I visited and just put it into one. One thing the owner got right, this place definitely isn't for me!
Hello SB S. - I am quite stumped as to how to respond to this review. I will start out by saying I am sorry that you have such strong feelings of disappointment and negativity toward the Red Rooster. Of course as expected with a new business of any type we have had numerous kinks to work out and improvements/changes we've made etc. The accusations of the RR smelling of dirty laundry and garbage is very confusing to me as we have a large number of very loyal repeat customers who visit sometimes several times weekly.... I feel blessed that I have been able to get to know some great folks who have become regulars as well as friends. The RR staff takes pride in keeping the restaurant as well as kitchen area clean at all times. I have never had a single customer complain of a bad smell until now. I am sorry as to what ever caused you to be so overwhelmed that you were unable to stand it and were forced to leave. Concerning the service, I will say that our team strives to treat the customers as family. I'm not sure how you had such a horrible experience with the service based on the fact that you found the smell to be so horrid that you could not stand to stay long enough to order a coffee for take out? That being the case it seems as though the server working at the time would never even had the opportunity to offer service?
I'm not sure in this case I can say anything to change your feelings. I want to close by saying that I am proud to use Costco as ONE of my choices as to where food is purchased. I love being able to go daily as needed and pick the quality and freshness with my own hands and see it with my own eyes. Depending on the other food service companies for 100% of our product would mean I never got to be the one who verified that what we have on hand is ALWAYS fresh, crisp, and top notch. I feel confident that the RR has many many happy customers. I know because I talk to them every day. I welcome suggestions, criticism, and of course praise as well. I opened the RR for the people of GH to enjoy and I will continue to put 150% each and every day to make it an inviting, family friendly, clean, establishment that serves yummy fresh food that is also reasonably priced. I appreciate your numerous visits in which it sounds all were horrible. Maybe the RR is just simply not for you....however I appreciate your efforts.
Life is too short not to leave with a smile :) Sincerely, Jamie Radcliffe (owner)
"My husband and I went to Lunch here Monday the 20th of December. What a nightmare! The owner was our server and she started out by bringing us our pop, the only problem, she put the dirty can of Soda inside the cup on top of the ice! I was horrified! doesn't she know how dirty the cans are. I was also horrified because a Photographer came in to take her Picture for Advertising and she took our Lunch off the counter and danced around the Restaurant with our food, set in on someone elses table and 5 minutes later brought it back to us. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? never go here. What a loser this place is. RUN!!!!!!!!!!!"
"As a business owner it is obviously disappointing to find out that a customer is less than pleased with their visit to your restaurant, I love feedback wether positive or negative because it gives me the ability to improve. In this particular case however, I am pretty blown away. The accusations made by this customer are simply not true. I can back this up with evidence based on facts and credible witnesses. The cans of soda were delivered on a tray. We always deliver a glass filled with ice and a straw and the can of pop which we open in front of the customer. The second accusation about "the owner dancing around the restaurant with the food" is just simply a bold face lie. Scott, the head photographer for the Gig Harbor Life news paper stopped in unexpectedly to snap a few photos for an article he was doing on the Red Rooster. The restaurant was basically empty. Only 2 tables were occupied, one by the lady who posted this comment and her husband.... and the other was 2 ladies sitting at a table about 12 to 15 feet away,
The next thing stated by this customer was that I took their food to the wrong table. Yes, I have no problem admitting that the confusion of the photos, etc. left my head a bit scattered and I walked to the other table that was also 2 people and upon setting the plates down, the 2 ladies laughed and quickly let me know that it was not what they ordered. Immediately, I said "oops", apologized, turned around and walked immediately back to the 1st table and gave them their order. The whole process took a total of 35 seconds max. How in the world this could be considered 5 minutes is completely unknown to me, Scott from GH life was there the whole time witnessing things and he agrees this is simply an untrue accusation that makes absolutely sense.
This comment seems so strange to me. I just want to say an open apology to Michelle T. who left it. My customers are very important to me. I am very sorry you had a bad experience. Sincerely, Jamie Radcliffe These comments from yelp just provide a glimpse into Miss Radcliffe's pattern. But, as you can see, she doesn't seem to see the reality as the rest of us do. Perhaps that's why she's so convinced she's been wronged here, just as she was convinced her customers were liars.
http://compassionandconsideration.blogspot.com
-Keep it clean -Don’t try to trick people -Treat others as you’d like to be treated Any user who violates this will lose privileges on Patch. Period. Let's all keep that in mind.
I have saved every single private message I have ever sent on Facebook since joining in 2008. ONE was sent to you and it was a copy of the letter Mr. Moist sent to you! Yes, I've posted on your RR page. So when someone disagrees with you , asks questions, and confronts you with erroneous statements you have made, that is harassing you? Well, then I guess what you and your 'supporters' (who have a pretty scary way of showing it) have been saying about Mr. Stearns and Mr. Moist, well, I would say they are being harassed! You will say you have never said anything about Mr. Stearns, you gave him a birthday present, etc.; however, I never saw you once object when people said he didn't deserve to breathe the same air as everyone else, karma would get him, he was unethical and worse. You said you wanted to move on, but you never encouraged others to do the same and stop with the bashing of Mr. Stearns or Mr. Moist! Your RR page doesn't frustrate me; the rude and untrue comments about the Stearns and Mr. Moist DO! You also accused Me. Stearns' daughter (by name) of not giving him your gift. That's not very nice, AND it's not true! This situation has nothing to do with a lot of the people who posted support for you either. IF you read the newspaper, you'll see that people who write 'Letters to the Editor' are rarely directly related or involved in the story on which they are commenting. People write in response to articles to express an opinion.