Q&A: Jessica and Craig Goodman American Pie restaurant in Ludlow [Vermont Business Magazine]

Jessica and Craig Goodman, both 41, own and operate Goodman's American Pie, a brick oven pizza restaurant on Main Street in Ludlow. Much of Main Street was badly damaged by the flooding from Tropical Storm Irene on August 28. The basement of American Pie, where all the equipment and food was kept, was completely flooded.

Craig is a Ludlow native, while Jessica was born and raised in California, moving to Ludlow 18 years ago after she married Craig. They have two children, 7 and 11 years old, and as Craig says plus a hundred kids from the neighborhood that are always at our house."

Living in one of the country's great ski towns, they snowboard as volunteers with their kids in the local school skiing program. As Craig put it, "I don't even remember learning how to ski, I've been skiing for so long. "

The decor of Goodman's American Pie requires a little explanation in order for this interview to make sense. The ordering counter is an old Volkswagen Bus, the walls are filled with snowboards, signs from ski areas and trails, and some of the booths are made from the parts of old ski lift chairs, so it has a definite ski town theme. It's funky and eclectic and fun, a popular spot for locals to eat at or to drop in and visit with the friendly owners.

Robert Smith interviewed the Goodmans in their restaurant two and a half weeks after Irene came through Vermont. Indicative of American Pie's popularity was that the interview was interrupted several times by people hoping that it was open again.

VBM: I'd like to start with the background on the restaurant and how you started it. How did you get here to Ludlow?

Jessica: We've been in business here 11 years. Craig helped build this half of the restaurant. It was a real labor of love. Everything came out of a junkyard or a garage, so it's all recycled. We were super lucky. Craig did a lot of the work himself. The VW Bus was from California, the chair lifts were from Ascutney (Mountain Resort). We found them in a junk yard. It's all been artistically bit-and-pieced together, which makes us unique.

Craig: All the bricks in the oven we jack hammered out of this building. So all the bricks are 100-plus years old.

Jessica: This building used to be a church. Then it was a movie theater.

VBM: I remember that! I came here and saw a movie back around 1971. I remember exactly, it was Don Johnson in a movie called "Zachariah," billed as "the first rock and roll Western!" I was the only person in the theater, and when they found out I'd driven 50 miles to see it because it was the only theater in the area playing it, they ran it for just me. What did you guys do before you opened the restaurant?

Craig: I was a custodian at the high school.

VBM: So you're local?

Craig: I grew up here and graduated from Black River High School. I moved out to California and we were out there for six years I think.

VBM: That's where you met?

Jessica: Yeah, I'm from California. We met there, got married there, and then came up here for a season so I could see snow, and that turned into 18 years. I have my own landscape business in the summertime. I'm usually a free pizza employee in the wintertime, but it's so busy now, because now we sell them frozen as well. We have them in like 40 different grocery stores, so it's really been taking off as more of a year round business. So I do less landscaping and more pizza.

Craig: That's where the flood may have really hurt us. Our packaging machine, well, we haven't tested it yet, but it may be shot. It's computerized.

Jessica: The packing/sealing function. VBM: Where are you selling?

Craig: We had just gotten approved to sell at Shaw's, but we had a lot of smaller stores, high-end co-ops, mom and pop stores. We were pretty much up north, Stowe, Essex, Burlington, Middlebury. We didn't have a lot in Southern Vermont, but we've been talking with a guy about expanding down that way as well. We were doing really well until this happened.

VBM: How many employees do you have?

Craig: Just us.

VBM: Just the two of you doing all of that plus running the restaurant and a landscape business?

Jessica: Yup. It's been crazy.

VBM: Wow, that's amazing. Tell me what happened the day of the flood.

Craig: We came in here that Sunday morning at about 10. We dropped a friend off here in Ludlow. We live in Proctorsville. It was dry here. We went down in the basement and looked around and it was completely dry.

Jessica: Then we went up by the lakes to check on one of my landscape accounts there to make sure it was buttoned up, and we couldn't even get down the road then. We had to turn around.

Craig: We went out on East Lake Road, then we had to stop and turn around because the road was already washed out. Then we came back to Ludlow and almost didn't make it past the fire department, it was flooding across there.

Jessica: The puddles that we came through on the way in to town were now up to the headlights.

Craig: We were actually pushing water with the front of our car, so we were like, "Gee, we better hurry up and get home."

Jessica: Our house and kids and everything were on the other side of the river. We thought this was going to be a fast loop.

Craig: By the time we got down here to the south end of town they'd closed down Commonwealth Avenue because water was rushing across that like a river. So we barely made it to our house. We actually live on the river down there, but we got lucky and our house was dry through the whole thing. They told us to evacuate, but we were able to stay in our house the whole time.

VBM: I was just down taking pictures in Proctorsville near where the church got so damaged.

Craig: We live like two houses down from that, right on the river.

VBM: That's amazing you didn't get damaged there. They did say that the river swung inland along the path of an old canal that had been filled in. So that took the water away from your house. Incredible.

Craig: We got lucky there.

Jessica: If we had to clean this place up and our house, I couldn't have handled that. We watched it on Facebook all that night, pictures and pictures of the damage.

Craig: Water was like four feet deep here on Main Street.

VBM: I found Facebook was really interesting during this disaster. I live in Westminster, and we were bracing for the high winds. I was really worried about some dead trees around the house. But just one branch came down on the roof. So, I'm thinking we all dodged a bullet. Then I get on Facebook, and there is all this stuff about flooding. So I left in the middle of the storm and was gone for six hours taking pictures at any place I could get to.

Craig: It was horrible. Down in Cavendish a whole section of road washed out, it's like 60 or 70 feet straight down. Unbelievable.

Jessica: They closed Route 103 on Monday, so we just wanted to see what was left of our business. So we and our two kids and our niece got on our bicycles and we rode our bikes here to check it out.

VBM: And that day was such a beautiful day!

Jessica: It was amazing. And the road - there were no cars.

Craig: Looked like Armageddon.

VBM: I came in to my office Monday morning early, then headed out to Londonderry and then here to Ludlow taking pictures of the damage, but you could only make it so far in either direction before they closed the road down due to damage.

Craig: There were buildings up on top of the guardrails, propane tanks jammed up against the bridges.

Jessica: It was so weird. We walked in here and we're going, "Thank god it's dry! I can't believe it's dry." Then we opened up the basement door. We all had empty backpacks. There was no power, so we were going to take our frozen pizzas and donate them to the shelters. At that point you can't sell them. So we open the basement door and there is like five and a half feet of water and everything is floating and upside down.

Craig: We had a big chest freezer at the bottom of the stairs. It was pretty sad. It was upside down floating.

VBM: So you didn't get water here on the main floor of the restaurant?

Craig: No. It didn't make it to the ceiling in the basement, but it, was just maybe a foot below. But everything was downstairs. My mixer, my slicer, my packaging machine, my walk-in cooler, all our paper products, all of our food. We lost every piece of food we had. Everything.

I had probably 250 to 300 frozen pizzas down there. We lost all of that. I had cases and cases of tomato sauce and I had to throw it all away. Even if we bleached it, the Health Department said if it was submerged in water or touching water, you couldn't sell it. You could donate it disclosing what had happened. I went to the food shelf and they didn't want it.

VBM: Do you have an estimate of how much you lost?

Jessica: We don't know if any of our equipment is going to work, and that alone is $20,000. There was another $8,000 in food and paper products.

Craig: And that's used equipment. not new. A new dough mixer alone is like $13,000.

Jessica: I have no idea what it's going cost to rebuild the basement. But the community was amazing. We had so many volunteers that we were sending them to other people that needed help. If you didn't know how to rewire something or build a wall, you could at least paint something. Pretty soon we had so much done we were asking people to go help in other places.

Craig: We had so many people. We had people come from North Carolina, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts. There was a girl that I worked with 20 years ago at a hospital in California who wrote me a nice letter and sent a check. She saw us on CNN, Main street in Ludlow, Vermont and our sign was in the broadcast.

VBM: We've got a lot of national attention. They were interviewing Governor Shumlin on NPR this morning and he was telling people to come to Vermont for foliage, that we're still open for business.

Jessica: Yes, we want the money to come in, but I'm not sure if the roads are ready for tourists.

Craig: They're trying. They've done a lot of work.

VBM: They said all the main roads will be open, and though they may-still be dirt in some sections, you'll still be able to get around and see the foliage.

Craig: We're hoping to be open by foliage season.

Jessica: We keep saying, "Oh, we'll be open next week. We'll be open next week."

VBM: What is your insurance situation? Will insurance cover any of this?

Jessica: We don't have insurance.

VBM: What help are you getting from FEMA?

Craig: They don't do small businesses. Apparently what happens is that you apply to FEMA, you get denied, and they give you a number and you use that number to apply for other avenues of help. Vermont has VEMA and VEDA, and there is a small business loan (SBA) that you can apply for. We got something else from the IRS today.

Jessica: Yeah, it was an IRS Disaster Kit, and I'm like "sweet!" But it was just a bunch of tax forms and I'm not sure how it's going to help me yet.

VBM: You'll probably be able to write off a fair amount in taxes.

Craig: That'll help. It's pretty discouraging. Not that they are making it harder, but there are so many hoops you have to jump through, I think a lot of people will give up.

Jessica: I could be here working all day, but by the time you get home, take care of the kids and get them to bed, do all your own stuff, I'm too worn out for paperwork. We applied for a Vermont Irene Relief Fund grant, something like that. It was a super easy form, and I thanked them for keeping it so simple.

Craig: We've spent thousands just replacing all the sheetrock. I had to gut the entire downstairs. The floor and all the walls were ruined, the walk-in cooler, the compressors. When I first opened here, everything I had was used. I slowly updated stuff over the years. My mixer, my brother found it on a loading dock and I got it for $150. You can't beat that deal. But new, that equipment is so expensive.

VBM: Realistically, when do you think you can reopen? It's been, what, just a little over two weeks since Irene came through?

Craig: Yeah, and we've been in here working every day except one since this happened. We're getting pretty worn down. But, there's not much else to do, we've got no job now. But we have no money coming in. It would be one thing if you had nothing to do and some money coming in!

Jessica: I don't know. Maybe another week? Now we're shut down and we're waiting for a friend to come and help us tile and we need time to do a little more trim work downstairs. Hopefully we can get our equipment running or have the option of buying some equipment. We are getting some things done that we've put off for 10 years.

Craig: Usually after foliage we close down for a week and I re-point the bricks in the oven and get it ready for winter.

Jessica: Now we won't have to shut down then, so you have to look at the positive end of everything. So we'll reopen clean and sparkly and repainted and the oven already pointed-off. You see other businesses that are just so financially hurt that they have to quit. But there's nothing else that we're really good at, and we've had so much community support that really wants to see us open. I get home and I'm thinking I don't want to do this anymore, but you come here and people are dying to come in and they want to know when we're going to be open. You have to keep going.

Craig: I had a bunch of people yesterday ask me at the soccer practice.

Jessica: Yeah, we painted the front and the back and from the outside the place looks great, but people don't realize that the damage is mostly really expensive equipment in the downstairs. I think we're gaining on it. Every day we say we're gaining on it.

Craig: I'd say probably two weeks. We had friends here from the first days. One family showed up with a sump pump and their kids and said, "We're here to help."

VBM: I hear those stories over and over. One man told me how this guy came along that he didn't know and said to him, "I'd guess your cellar got flooded. Here's a sump pump. I'll come back for it in a couple of hours."

Jessica: It really has brought the community together. It made us realize that we're making an impact on Ludlow.

Craig: The community is really pulling together. DJ's did a benefit dinner for the first couple of nights. It was open to the public, free food. They had a huge buffet Monday and Tuesday. The head chef there was here the next day helping me haul stuff out of here.

Jessica: All the staff volunteered their time. It was great. Financially this was a disaster, but it had a good side, I think, for the town.

VBM: It seems that every town has done the same thing. They had isolated communities, but they had gardens and they hunted, so they had freezers full of meat and they fed one another.

Craig: We brought a freezer's worth of frozen pizzas down to the Cavendish Elementary School where they had a shelter set up and were doing breakfast lunch and dinner there for a week or more. So we brought what we had down there, and we gave Singleton's a credit so they could donate the pizzas they had.

Jessica: It has really brought the communities together.

VBM: (An update on the Goodman's: I called them on September 24, a month after the flooding. Craig said they expected to be open on October 1, and that repairs and remodeling were nearly complete. The VW van that is the restaurant's main counter was in the process of being repainted with a vintage '60s look. The dough mixer has been repaired, the new walk-in cooler is finished and operating, but the packaging machine the Goodmans use for their retail pizza sales business will have to be replaced. They'll look into, that once the restaurant is up and running again.

"We went and talked with FEMA," Craig said. "They were very nice, but they just pushed me along to the Small Business Administration to get a business loan. They were very nice, and the loan has great rates and you can pay it back over 20 years, so it's very attractive. But I'm not sure that I want to add a 20-year debt at this point.")