Skip to content

A town square for an unsquare town

redbankgreen

Standing for the vitality of Red Bank, its community, and the fun we have together.

RED BANK: McLOONE GOES ALL-IN DOWNTOWN

red-bank-26-broad-robinson-ale-120821-500x332-4071120The back-end operations of McLoone’s restaurant empire will relocate to offices above Robinson Ale House. Below, Tim McLoone leading Holiday Express in its 28th Christmas-season kickoff concert last month. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

red-bank-holiday-express-light-up-mcloone-112621-220x146-1851990After seven years as a tenant, Tim McLoone has bought the building that houses his Robinson Ale House restaurant in Red Bank.

Earlier this week, redbankgreen caught up with 73-year-old restaurateur by phone as he rode a bus to Camden for one of 22 Christmas concerts he and his charity band, Holiday Express, have scheduled this year.

tim-mcloone-043017-2-500x375-6210244McLoone and the Shirleys performing at a festival in Red Bank in 2017. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

Robinson Ale House, restaurant, named for McLoone’s Red Bank-rooted in-laws, opened at 26 Broad Street in December, 2014, taking over the space and liquor license from the Murphy Style Grille.

Last month, through a limited liability company, McLoone bought the building for $3.5 million, according to property records. The deal came 20 months after the COVID-19 pandemic forced McLoone to lay off more than 700 employees across 11 restaurants he owns in New Jersey.

So what does the purchase say about the state of his business, the success of Broadwalk experiment downtown and the pandemic-era economy more broadly?

The purchase was driven by several factors, McLoone said, including the approaching end of a lease on space in Shrewsbury that serves as the back-end office for his restaurants. He plans to move the office, comprising about a dozen employees, by March 1, taking all the available space.

Another “big piece,” he said, was the fact that the Rum Runner site in Sea Bright was the only other property the restaurant group owned, and “just to be fiscally sound, it’s good to have assets.”

He’s also deeply committed to Red Bank, he said.

“The business has been very consistent there, from the minute we opened, so we don’t have to worry about it being as seasonal as our other places,” he said.

He’s “more than grateful” that the borough shut down the north end of Broad Street for the past two summers to spur business during the pandemic, he said.

“Broadwalk’s the greatest,” McLoone said. “The only problem with that is that it helps some more than others, but I know everybody’s working on it. And I think that all the people over the years who kept talking about making Broad Street a walking mall are now kind of vindicated.”

McLoone said the $15-per-hour minimum wage he adopted in May for non-tipped employees is working to lure back reluctant employees, though it’s too soon to tell if it will slow turnover.

The wage issue, he said, forced him to acknowledge that he “inadvertently became part of sort of an abusive system, where we relied on underpaid help to try to make money, and that the business model for restaurants was too dependent on people who could not make a living wage,” he said.

“I’m not trying to come off as some proverbial do-gooder, but that’s the truth: we were living off of them, and not doing great, by the way,” he said. “So it’s not like the model was wrong from a financial standpoint, but it was wrong from a humanistic standpoint.”

Now, with worker shortages, “for the first time, the lowest-paid in the United States have leverage. And good on ’em.”

The increased minimum required him to boost wages across the board, so that “everybody got more,” he said, but the bottom line has begun to improve after a slow start, he said. And more increases will be needed in the industry “in order to get people to buy into this lifestyle,” which requires dealing with pressure, customer complaints and more.

Where are we in the recovery, assuming the omicron variant doesn’t undo recent gains?

“I think we’re probably 85 percent of the way back,” he said. “I run into people all the time who tell me, ‘this is my first time out in a restaurant.’ We still hear that…. But it seems like we’re at least heading to where this is more mundane, if the holdouts would just get vaccinated.”

If you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen, please become a financial supporter for as little as $1 per month. Click here to set your own level of monthly or annual contribution.

Remember: Nothing makes a Red Bank friend happier than to hear "I saw you on Red Bank Green!"
Partyline
THEY’RE BACK!
Ospreys returned to the skies over Red Bank this week for the first time since they migrated to warmer climes in late fall. With temperature ...
SPRING IS SPRUNG
RED BANK: Spring 2024 arrives on the Greater Red Bank Green with the vernal equinox at 11:06 p.m. Tuesday.
RED BANK’S FINEST – AND NEWEST
Red Bank Police Officer Eliot Ramos was sworn in as the force’s newest patrolman Thursday, and if you’re doing a double take thinkin ...
EASTER EGG MAYHEM AT THE PARK
An errant whistle spurred an unexpectedly early start to the Spring Egg Hunt on Sunday, which had been scheduled to begin at eggsactly 11am ...
PRESEASON DOCKWORK
RED BANK: With winter winding down, marina gets ready for boating season with some dockwork on our beautiful Navesink River.
CORNED BEEF AND DISCO FRIES?
It’s Friday, and smart Lent-observing Leprechauns know the pot of gold at the end of Red Bank’s rainbow is actually the deliciou ...
SURFBOARD DITCHED
It’s a violation of etiquette in surfing to ditch your board.  (it could hit another surfer and hurt them). But someone appears to ha ...
ELSIE, TAKE ME WITH YOU!
Soaked by pouring rain with the temperature hovering in the low 40’s, this sign in the window of Elsie’s Subs on Monmouth Street ...
WALK THIS WAY
PARTYLINE: Before-and-afters of a sidewalk cleanup on West Street.
SOGGY NOTION
RED BANK: Breezeway sculpture captured the mood downtown as heavy rains fell Saturday morning.
HOME DELIVERY
RED BANK: After a subdivision, an instant house rises on a new Catherine Street lot.
COMMUNITY PROFILES
For Black History Month, Red Bank's Community Engagement and Equity Advisory Committee has been running a series of local profiles on Facebo ...
HEARTY FAREWELL FOR HARDY
RED BANK: Council to honor DPU supervisor Rich Hardy, who retired recently after almost 39 years of keeping things running.
HOMEBOUND? READ ON…
RED BANK: Can't get to the public library? It's now offering free delivery and pickups for homebound borough residents.
TAMING A BEAST OF A WEEK
RED BANK: After the second snowfall of the week, a borough family finds the perfect use for it – a Godzilla snow sculpture.
RED BANK: LIBRARY CLOSED, BUT THE HILL’S OPEN
RED BANK: Though the library was closed by a snowstorm, kids got to enjoy the riverfront property's steep slope Tuesday.
LIGHT(HOUSE) MAKEOVER
This year, getting ready for spring means a midwinter makeover for Strollo's Lighthouse in Red Bank.
TODAY: LOCAL PUPPY COMPETES ON ANIMAL PLANET’S “PUPPY BOWL”
Red Bank’s very own rescue puppy, Biscuit, is set to compete in Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl this Sunday, February 11, at 2 PM. Th ...
WHAT? NO redbankgreen NEWSLETTER?
Apologies to redbankgreen newsletter subscribers: the daily email hasn’t gone out for two days because of technical issues.
RED BANK: TIRED OF SKEETERS?
RED BANK: Tired of mosquito bites every summer? Monmouth County has a free program to help eliminate skeeter breeding grounds.