Celebration circa 1971
They’re having a big birthday bash over at Celebration Restaurant to celebrate 42 years of great food and service, says Ed Lowe, Lakewood resident and chief operating officer.
Through March 6 servers will present meatloaf and roasted rosemary chicken at the 1970’s price of $6.95 per plate.Lowe opened the restaurant in 1971 with the financial backing of his parents, and as it became more successful, they expanded to include a market and catering business.
Now Lowe, Mr. old hippie, is “constantly aggressively looking for ways to improve,” though they seem to be doing pretty well as is.
“We have a lot of wonderful people, we call them ‘partners’ not ’employees,’ we have slightly over 100 partners,'” Lowe says, adding that 50 percent of them have been there for five years. Good help is not hard to find if you take care of people,” Lowe says.
It’s important for Lowe to have loyal employees because that’s what makes his business successful, he says. He even goes so far as to say that employees come first and then the customers, which isn’t an odd business model when you think about it. Keep the employees happy and they’ll want to keep everyone else happy in return, he says.
“Our philosophy has always been when you come in you’ll get the same or better quality than you got before. If you [a business] are trying to stay the same you’ll probably gonna get worse,” he says.
