Mary Maestri’s Keeps On Cooking in Springdale

Daniel Maestri said the food, the service and the atmosphere are what make Mary Maestri’s special. He has operated the Springdale restaurant for nearly 40 years.

Renowned Italian restaurant Mary Maestri’s once occupied a stately building on the outskirts of Tontitown, far removed from the hustle and bustle of northwest Arkansas.

Now the restaurant, which first opened in 1923, stands on a busy four-lane Springdale street, an icon in name but just another restaurant by outside appearance.

Daniel Maestri is 60 now and has been spinning plates to keep the doors open at Mary Maestri’s Italian Grillroom — the restaurant his grandparents Aldo and Mary started in Aldo’s parents’ kitchen — for nearly 40 years. He doesn’t know how he got this incarnation opened or how much longer it will even stay in the Maestri family.

“I shouldn’t even be here,” Maestri said. “This should never been reopened. How did I do that with no money and no credit? It was a miracle.”

Maestri, the third generation to have run the place, doesn’t know if a fourth generation will succeed him. His 17-year-old daughter, Isabella, loves working there — “She even likes doing the dishes,” Daniel said — but he’s ambivalent about seeing her take over the family business, which has been the cause of much joy and much pain over the years.

“When I took it over, I didn’t feel like I had a choice,” Maestri said. “My grandmother lived there. It wasn’t just taking it over; it was taking care of her as well. I did enjoy it, but it was losing money when I took it over.

“The first two or three years, I had to work 110 hours a week, which was not fun. My grandmother said to me, when she told me she was going to leave it to me, ‘You have to make me a promise. Only run it as long as it makes a profit and it makes you happy. Don’t do it for me.’ Well, shit.”

Burdened With Debt

Maestri took over in 1977 after his father, Ed, died. The restaurant, where Mary also lived, had established itself on Henri De Tonti Boulevard in Tontitown, but when Daniel Maestri went to do renovations, he said he was advised to tear down the dilapidated structure and build a new restaurant.

“That was the second-biggest mistake I made,” Maestri said.

Maestri said the debt he incurred to rebuild the restaurant in 1980 never went away, even as the restaurant did strong business in the 1980s. On the restaurant’s website, Daniel Maestri is up front about how his business inexperience and youth proved costly.

When the IRS demanded payment of taxes due or forfeiture of the property, Maestri filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1986. It’s clear he believes this to be the worst mistake he has made, but one he felt was unavoidable because of what he called illegal threats of seizure by the IRS.

“By the time I was in there five years, I was so far in debt,” Maestri said. “We were so busy, it was crazy. It was the best and worst you could ask for. All the money that we could have made all went to [pay off] interest, even more than we made.”

Maestri has been struggling to catch up since, but with bad credit and no cash, the restaurant business is a cold night. It finally crashed down on Maestri in 2010, shortly after he borrowed $100,000 for a remodel, when the state closed the restaurant for its failure to pay sales taxes.

After a few months, Maestri reopened Mary Maestri’s in Fayetteville before moving it to its current location on East Robinson Avenue in August 2012. With little cash for marketing, Mary Maestri’s relies on word of mouth and the loyalty of customers and their kin, some of whom Daniel Maestri has been serving since he first started working in the restaurant when he was a teenager.

“I think that we have a pretty good business considering that we’re in a new location,” Maestri said. “It could be busier. I just need to spend money on marketing and get the word out. It’s not a cheap proposition to advertise. You can spend a lot of money real quick.”

It’s money that Maestri doesn’t have. It’s why Maestri has been looking for an investor to either support or take over the restaurant.

“It’s just having the money,” Maestri said. “I’m just going to be straight up with you: What happened in 2010 really put me in a hard financial position. It has been hard ever since. Day to day is a challenge.”

Maestri said he would prefer that someone with an appreciation for the restaurant’s iconic status help him rather than buy him out because he does enjoy the business. He is at the restaurant — with the adjoining Aldo Wine & Coffee Bar — every night, and he appreciates that there are fifth-generation customers whose great-great-grandparents ate in Mary Maestri’s kitchen all those years ago.

“I used to think I was keeping it going for her,” his grandmother, Maestri said. “Then I got to the point who I was really keeping it going for was the public. I can’t explain what that’s like. It’s more than money. It’s a reward that is hard to explain.

“It got in my blood.”

Believing in the Food

Maestri said business has been relatively good at the current location, with the restaurant making just enough money to keep things going. He said Mary Maestri’s did approximately $800,000 in sales in 2013 but then dropped to $700,000 when it stopped serving lunch in 2014.

“I’m optimistic about the future,” Maestri said. “We’ve been through some things. Definitely, the first year was the hardest. The second year was better. I expect this year to be better than last year. We’re not making a lot of money.”

But Maestri said he is a believer in what makes Mary Maestri’s special: the food, the service, the atmosphere. He believes it could be replicated in multiple locations — a dream that can never come to fruition, of course, because he barely has the money and wherewithal to keep the one location running.

“The only thing that we don’t have that would ensure our success for years to come is a proper amount of capital,” Maestri said. “That’s it. You can’t create that. You can’t just make it up. There’s no operating capital for fixing things sometimes, replacing things, marketing.”

Maestri said he tries not to look back at the past with regret but to learn from his mistakes. He said his struggles to keep the restaurant open have strengthened his faith.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Maestri said. “I think there is a plan God has for me. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not worried about what happens. I know whatever happens, I’ll be fine and it will all work out.”