Check Out Jeffrey Coyle’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeffrey Coyle.

Hi Jeffrey, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up on a beef farm in rural Wisconsin. Went to college in northern Wisconsin to play baseball. Once baseball was over for me, I got involved in the restaurant business and fell in love. I was skipping classes to go to work at the restaurant. Once I graduated, I worked for a year at IBM and was bored stiff, so I got back into restaurants. I was GM of a few places in and around Milwaukee for years, took a brief stint in fine wine sales, and then returned to restaurants as Food and Beverage Manager for the Marriott in Downtown Milwaukee.

That job allowed me to travel throughout the United States assisting with opening restaurants, consulting on struggling restaurants within our portfolio, and acquiring new hotels and restaurants. I moved to Denver in June of 2015 and continued in a similar role with a new company. I moved to Bend, OR right before COVID hit to be the Corporate Director of Food and Beverage for Oxford Inns and Suites before moving back to Denver 18 days later.

After taking a (forced) eight months off (just like everyone else in the business) I started a restaurant consulting company to assist restaurants that would be coming out of COVID and get back open efficiently. I took a few more restaurant GM and Director roles (Apple Blossom, Brown Palace) before eventually finding the location of Wolf Peach available and we jumped on it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Overall it has been smooth. My experience is approaching 27 years now, and I have had the opportunity to open or work in about 40 places prior to opening Wolf Peach, with my prior positions in hotels. Those positions showed me what to expect, had a ton of template opening spreadsheets, etc.

My family and I did the majority of the work inside the restaurant once we got the keys, with the exception of the bar face tiling, the floor, and the dining room paint (too high of ceilings for me!). So it was a ton of work, but nothing that I would consider “not smooth.” We opened the day after Labor Day and thought we would just get off to a crawl to start… boy were we wrong. On the third day open (Thursday) we did 88 covers and on Friday, did 160. We went from 0 to 100 in a blink. It hasn’t slowed down since.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I specialize in Front of House and set up, with an emphasis on training, policy and practice procedures, wine/cocktail/beer, and service. I would consider myself knowledgeable enough in culinary to hold my own, but that said, I am over the moon happy with our culinary team. They are really versatile and were open to hearing my vision and then executing it.

I think a few of them were very skeptical about our build-your-own charcuterie boards, but that has really set us apart. Now the culinary team is training our front-of-house team on what each item is individually. It’s so cool to see. I think what I am most proud of is the culture we have created in all the restaurants I have worked in, especially with Wolf Peach.

On the first day of training when we all got together for the very first time, we never mentioned steps of service, cocktail recipes, or table numbers; we talked for about an hour and a half about the company culture we wanted to push forward, I think our team all got on the same page after that first day, and I think everyone left with a very clear expectation of what we, as a team, wanted to accomplish.

Many of our team members, I think, are really happy to see me working the floor, running food, bussing tables, and tending the bar. I’ve heard from a lot of them that they have worked for restaurants where the owner is not around much. One conversation I had with a culinarian here was him telling me how much he appreciated seeing me in the trenches with them……. as I was deck-brushing the floor.

How do you think about luck?
I think everyone who owns a business has to run into at least a little luck. But luck can sometimes be confused with circumstance. I don’t consider it lucky that I moved to Denver 8 years ago; it was just where my life led me at the moment. I also had a baseball coach once tell me that the “harder you work, the luckier you’ll get.” That made a lot more sense to me once I got older.

That said, I do consider myself incredibly lucky every day to have met my wife. It’s incredibly lucky that we even connected. I don’t think she envisioned being involved with a restaurant owner when we met 6 or so years ago. She has an incredible eye for design; something I greatly lack. All the beauty of Wolf Peach is all from her creativity. I sometimes look around and wonder how she came up with what she did; meanwhile I’m still working at a stick-man and lolli pop tree level.

Pricing:

• Sharables: $10-20
• Entrees: $28-38
• Wines: $14-25
• Charcuterie items: all $6

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thewolfpeach.com
• Instagram: @wolfpeach_restaurant