Perkin's Restaurant & Bakery

W
hen the local Perkins Restaurant
& Bakery sites closed in bankruptcy in 1999, children mourned
the loss of their hot chocolate, bear pancakes and chicken nuggets.
And area seniors wondered if they would
ever again drink a Bottomless Pot of Coffee or eat a Granny's Country Omelette.
In 2000, however, Philip Gelsomino II and
his partners in the Restaurant Group LLC
brought the chain and its menu back. The group
now has seven Perkins locations, including
three in Monroe County'Chili Avenue, Jefferson Road and Fairport Nine Mile Point
Road. A site in Victor recently was approved.
As CEO, Gelsomino oversees site selection and construction of the restaurants along
wi th da i ly ope r a t ions . The g roup employs
some 700 worke r s , roughly 100 pe r s tor e ,
with total annual revenues of $16.5 million.
'Back in 2000, John Buttrill called me
up and said, 'I miss Perkins, I want to bring
it back. Would you help me find some investors?'� says Gelsomino, 38.
Gelsomino had been a CPA for 15 years
and owned Gelsomino and Co.
'I said no. My daughter was just born
and I wanted to quiet down a bit,� he says.
Buttrill, founder and managing director of But t r i l l & As soc i a t e s , a f inanc i a l
services firm, persistently pursued Gelsomino for the next month.
'Finally he annoyed me to the point where
I met with him,� Gelsomino says. 'I looked
at his business plan and I thought, 'Wow, this
is really too interesting for me to pass up.'
'Never mind investors, I wanted to do
this with them myself.�
The partners of the Restaurant Group, a
Pe rkins f r anchi s e company, inc lude But -
trill and Harris Rusitzky. Rusitzky founded the Rochester-based Serv-Rite Food Service Corp., which became a multimilliondollar operation. The Restaurant Group's
offices are in Calkins Road Office Park.
N a t i o n a l ly, Pe r k i n s i s ow n e d by t h e
Restaurant Co. in Memphis. It owns and
ope r a t e s 154 Pe rkins and ha s 345 f r anchised restaurants. Systemwide restaurant
sales in 2002 were $819 million. Company-ope r a t ed r e s t aur ant s ave r aged $1.85
million each in 2002. The franchised units
topped $1.55 million each.
Out of the ashes
Before filing Chapter 11 in the late 1990s,
Perk Development Corp. owned 43 restaurants'almost all the Perkins Restaurants in
the state. Denny's Corp. bought some of the
locations in a bankruptcy auction, including one on Jefferson Road in Henrietta.
A l i t t l e gun- shy a f t e r the bankr upt cy,
the Perkins parent wanted to offer the new
loc a l g roup one s tor e , Ge l somino s ays .
But the group had bigger plans. It wanted
a contract for multiple stores in multiple
locations.
G e l s o m i n o 's g r o u p h a s t h e f r a n c h i s e
rights to all Perkins restaurants in the Western New York territory. The region is bounded by I-81, through Binghamton, west to
Buffalo, north to Watertown and south to
Jamestown and the Pennsylvania border.
Perkins stores are a cross between a theme
restaurant and a breakfast house. Customers
come primarily from two groups.
'There is 55 and plus who are what we
refer to as our heritage guests,� Gelsomino
says. 'They have been with Perkins forever and they love breakfast items mostly. The second is the 35-year-old, give or
take five years, with children. We're truly a family restaurant.�

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Monday	Open
Tuesday	Open
Wednesday	Open
Thursday	Open
Friday	Open
Saturday	Open
Sunday	Open