Common Ground: Out with anarchy, in with hairnets — struggling ‘70s-era collective revamped

By Christopher Parker | Special to the Vermont Guardian
photo by Christopher Parker

posted June 2, 2006

Brattleboro’s Common Ground restaurant, once a dynamic and popular vegetarian worker cooperative before an extended period of decline and dormancy, will once again become a magnet and an example, according to the plans of a new group spearheading a re-opening, possibly as soon as this month.

Unlike previous attempts at revival, this effort is lead by a board of directors with business skills who represent the community as well as the workers. There will be managers to insure quality of food and service, and a business plan is in place.

“That’s fantastic,” opined Peter Amidon of Brattleboro. “We travel around the country a lot, and whenever we mention Brattleboro, people mention Common Ground. It’s amazing how associated Brattleboro is with the Common Ground.”

Common Ground dates from the beginning of the 1970s. “When we first moved here it was sort of a restaurant for the counter-culture,” Amidon recalled. “Shortly after that, it became a very popular restaurant for basically everyone,” he said. “You could get a really good soup and salad for not very much money. They had music and it was an integral part of the culture of the town.

“When we went there in the early days, I loved it,” Amidon remembered. “It was rustic, certainly. They had the natural wooden tables. The food was good, the service was good. Everybody was there.”

Decline and rebirth

Common Ground thrived in the ’70s and ’80s. Then, in the ’90s, the deterioration began. “It became very inconsistent and unpredictable,” said Sabrina Smith, board member and the new front-end manager, whose job it will be to see that this doesn’t happen again.

The problem, said Smith, came from a huge turnover rate for a number of years. “Essentially, the reason that happened was that over the course of two years a good 80 to 90 percent of the old, experienced crew quit, it seemed to me, because of interpersonal dynamics. With that whole wave of experience leaving, new, young, inexperienced people came on board. A few key people just kind of dropped the reigns.

“There was chaos for a little while. Service got really poor and the food got really inconsistent, really bad. That was about ’96 or ’97.” The disorganization and lack of money meant that several minor waves of revival have since sputtered out.

When the end seemed in sight for Common Ground, with debts mounting and the town ready to foreclose for unpaid taxes, Josh Chambers stepped back into the picture to get the collective reopened. “A gentleman named Michael Marantz gave the Common Ground a loan, which Ian Bigelow and myself were responsible for paying back. We put together a board of directors that represented, in our opinion, Brattleboro and also restaurants.”

“We’re taking it slow to make sure that we are going to open up on the right step,” Chambers said. “We want the community to accept the Common Ground as a good place for people to go to. We’re giving it our full attention and trying to create a business plan that looks successful.”

The board of directors is an innovation in the life of the collective. Previously, decisions were made by consensus among the large group of worker-members. This time, the board will be accountable as staff members come and go, and will step in if a crisis arises.

Eight members are on the board, half of them workers and half from the community. In addition to Smith and Bigelow, the board includes Chambers, Krista Porter, Larry Bloch, David Hyler, Steve Bissette, and Tim Guarente.

To reopen the restaurant, taxes and debts must be paid, and considerable investment made in the facilities, which have deteriorated over the years. The property will be refinanced with a mortgage that will also cover four months’ expenses and new equipment.

“Without the loan, we’re not going anywhere,” said Bloch, who anticipates no trouble getting it. But, he said, “There’s not enough money to do everything. That porch extension doesn’t work particularly well. But we can’t afford to replace it.”

In addition to the board, there will also be full-time managers to ensure accountability. As front-end manager, Smith will be in charge of service, and Chambers will manage the kitchen. There will also be a professionally trained, full-time chef who will provide consistency.

“I’m looking forward to the fact that it’s a fresh new start and it will be like the Common Ground is getting an new lease on life,” said Smith. “It’s really being resurrected in the true sense of the word. It’s still a worker-owned collective; it’s still an example of a socialistic business, but the anarchistic approach is gone.

“I plan on running things like a business, a cooperative business, as opposed to an anarchistic free-for-all,” she continued.

Smith said there will be a hierarchy of decision making and more checks and balances within the system. “I plan on running a pretty tight ship. Nobody’s going to be coming in through the back door. I plan on maintaining a very clean, professional environment. All the wait staff will adhere to health code; kitchen staff as well, in terms of hats and hairnets and cut fingernails and no jewelry.

“The front end manager will have authority to not allow a wait staff person to work if they show up improperly dressed or unbathed or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The staff will be much smaller. Not meaning there will be fewer people on the floor, but fewer staff overall.”

Smith said the Common Ground’s “riff-raff element” will also be absent. “It will be in our policy that if you are not there to eat or drink or buy something, that after awhile if you are just hanging around, someone’s going to ask you why you are there. So that whole element that the Common Ground is kind of like a clubhouse and there’s all these people hanging around not working and not eating — that’s not going to be happening.”

There will still be live music on the weekends, she added.

Vegetarian, mostly organic, food will continue to be the staple, but locally raised organic chicken and fish will be introduced, according to Chambers and Smith. There will be an all-organic salad bar. Lunches will feature an organic hot food self-service counter.

“There might be a burrito bar one day, there might be Indian food,” noted Smith. “Someone who has a half-hour lunch break will be able to get in and out of there and have a nice organic hot lunch. The amount of time that it takes someone to eat their lunch at the Common Ground will be up to them,” she said.

“I feel inspired to work at the Common Ground because I want a place like the Common Ground to take my family out to eat,” said Chambers, “you know, good, affordable food that everyone can go to.”

The history of Common Ground includes a reservoir of good memories and inspiration. Since there are few collectives in this country, supporters envision Common Ground as a model for alternative economic models. “Maybe not anti-capitalistic, but ‘alter-capitalistic,’ if that’s a word,” said Smith, “an alternative to the traditional business model of one owner, one profiter.”