By AMY RICKER
Great Bend Post
Regardless of what it is, spending half a century doing the same thing is rare. For Loren Unruh, the last 50 years have been spent in the foodservice industry in Great Bend.
At the age of 24, Unruh was running a custom harvest crew that employed up to 12 hired hands. During wheat harvest, he and his wife, Connie and their crew ate out often. So often that Unruh and his wife began talking at length about starting their own restaurant in Great Bend.
During one of his trips to Texas to check on wheat, Unruh ran across a franchise show where "every franchise you could imagine" was represented. As he looked through the different options, he found a steakhouse that he liked, and that was the road to go down. Sometime later, Connie was in Wichita supervising children on a church trip, and they ate at a steakhouse.
"She came back that night and told me that she knew what direction we needed to go with a steakhouse," explained Unruh.
They went down to Wichita, and the two brothers that owned the steakhouse decided to help train them on how to run and set their steakhouse up. The agreement was sealed with a simple handshake.
While there, Unruh met Bob Fagen, an architect who already had plans drawn up for a restaurant and wanted to start a franchise.
"I was fortunate to fall into that."
Meanwhile, the two original brothers wouldn't cooperate with Fagan on acquiring the equipment needed for the new restaurant.
"I was cutting wheat in Colorado, and I flew back to Wichita, and Fagan wanted to meet with me.” said Unruh. “He said, 'I'll tell you what, I'll set you all up. I got people lined up, I got money lined up to do a franchise, and I'll help you get going.'"
With Fagen's help, Loren and Connie lived in the dorms at Wichita State University, working in the foodservice department during the mornings and afternoons. In the evenings, they worked at a steakhouse. Loren worked in the kitchen and Connie as a hostess and overseeing the servers. During this time, they were able to acquire the equipment needed for their own business back in Great Bend.
Unruhs leased the ground west of the current Best Western Angus Inn from Fred and Vida Apple.
"They were good enough to lease the ground; otherwise, we probably wouldn't have gotten it done."
Unruhs built a new building and opened the doors to the Black Angus Steak Ranch on October 27, 1970. While the business became rapidly successful, they quickly realized they had a parking issue. Luckily, a nearby home was purchased and moved off the property to expand the parking lot.
According to Unruh, running a restaurant back then was vastly different than what it is now.
"It was different in the food business back then. You were able to operate, had plenty of business and it was easy to grow and make money," said Unruh.
As the business grew, Unruh decided that their next business venture would be a motel. He purchased the drive-in restaurant next door called the Big Wheel Drive-In. Unruh operated the drive-in for a few years before tearing it down to build a motel, which opened as the Angus Inn in 1977.
All three of his children worked at the restaurant in high school, but after college, they went different directions, and he couldn't get anyone to come back and help run it.
"I thought maybe my son would do it at one time when I built the hotel. But in the end, no. I guess I ran them out with working them too hard at the restaurant," Unruh chuckled.
Connie handled the advertising, and there was one particular ad that stands out from all the others.
"My son was in high school, and my wife was very good at putting all the ads together. She came up with the idea of having my son sit down in the booth with our hostess at the time. The television crew was filming them, and my son was talking about how great the restaurant was and how he always brought his dates there to eat. He ended it by saying, 'Of course, my dad owns the place.'"
Unruh said that was the longest-running commercial they ever had.
"It was probably the cutest ad we ever did."
After several years, the restaurant started having financial struggles, and Unruh decided the solution was to have a controlled menu. The only way to do that was to have a franchise. With the hotel, he needed to find something that included breakfast. This was how the current Perkins Restaurant & Bakery restaurant was initially established in Great Bend.
Through the years, Unruh can't begin to imagine the total amount of hours he's put in running his business. Early on in his food industry career, he remembers feeling that people probably thought he didn't know what he was doing since he was coming off the farm with zero restaurant experience. Then, a good friend of his told him that while he probably didn't know what he was doing, he knew how to work hard.
"That's what the food industry is...a lot of 'work hard,'" Unruh jokes.
When asked if he had any advice for young people who want to get into the food industry, Unruh says, "When it comes to the food and hospitality industry, I always say that if you can manage people, you can always get a job and make a lot of money in it. A lot of people don't have that ability, but if you have the ability to manage your help, know when to hire, and the interviews and all that stuff, the food management business can be very profitable."
He knows that most high school and college people come to work at one of his establishments as a first job. Typically, they will step up and move on in life. However, Unruh feels that working in this industry is a great starting point for gaining experience and learning how to deal with the public.
Like everyone else this year, he's had to deal with the pandemic's fallout and find ways to keep his businesses profitable with the drop in customers.
"In all my 50 years in doing this, I've never seen anything like this outside of E-Coli showing up in hamburger, and the meat had to be recalled. But that just hurts the restaurants for a short time. There's been a couple of chains that have been through that a couple of times. But after a while, people get comfortable again, and they've managed to get through that short time. But this has been the worst thing I have ever gone through as far as our industry. It's really affected the hospitality industry. People aren't traveling, wedding and banquets have been canceled, and the hotels have taken the worst of it. It's not expected to pick up until next April. We are being told it would probably be 2022 before we are back to where we were before all of this."
After 50 years, you can probably imagine what Unruh's favorite thing is to cook. "A steak. That was always my favorite. When I started, I had Bobby Garcia, a fry cook who knew what he was doing. That was a big help with my success. He could handle a grill right away, and I could handle all of the other issues you have when you start a business. But, one day a week, I was in the kitchen and learned to do all of the cooking that he did."
"Actually, my favorite thing is to meet and greet the people and see them happy." He pauses for a moment. "Yeah, that's my favorite. I love to see people happy and enjoying what they got."
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