Bites of Wisdom from Snackers Owner

After experience working in corporate restaurants, about sixteen years ago, Jim Dames set out to open his own restaurant in then restaurant-starved Western Springs. Now the Darien resident, who runs the restaurant with his wife with help from his two children and brother, finds himself surrounded by restaurants but shares how his friendly, family-run restaurant Snackers keeps standing out.

Question: What prompted you to open a restaurant?

Jim Dames: At the time I was 39 years old and didn't have plans for retirement so I thought that I'd better do something…Now if it works is a whole different story.

Q: How do you choose what to put on your menu?

JD: By market trends: what's current, what people are seeing around. It's evolved quite a bit throughout the years. When wraps were gaining popularity we did wraps, we've done paninis. We just follow the trend of what people are looking for. The basics seem to remain; the panini has been on the menu for years…If something doesn't sell, it usually gets taken off.

Q: Why did you choose to open your store in Western Springs?

JD: I think it's a great town, conveniently located. We're not looking to make a fortune, just to make a living. And it was the kind of place that was the right size – not too big, not too small – not too far from my home.

Q: What is the best thing about running your own business?

JD: I think the best thing is being able to make changes as deemed necessary rather than going through corporate layers and requesting to do something. The ability to do it and make it happen is the best thing.

Q: What have been the biggest hurdles running your own business?

JD: Trying to make it work. I think small businesses are at a disadvantage, especially today with the media and the soundbites. I mean, everyone is hearing this place or that place and the chains have the capital to do focus groups and pick the best of what they see and spend the money on it. We don't have that opportunity. [If a small business] makes a mistake on something, you get beat up on it, so that's a pretty big difference there.

Q: How would you describe your customer base?

JD: We're unique in that most restaurants are targeted toward specific age groups and we're from 2 to 92; we're truly representative of the community. You come in here in the morning and there's men and women in suits and dresses, high profile people going to work downtown; you come in at lunch and it could be moms with kids some days or construction workers. In the evening, families and individuals; after school, some kids. That's the way it is and it sometimes hurts us. Sometimes, if people come in on a noon dismissal day from McClure it looks like just a kid place and that really doesn't represent us, but that's what people sometimes see.

Q: What types of advice would you give to a new small-business owner? 

JD: Talk to business owners. That would be my biggest piece of advice before you make the leap. You're always reading magazines that say, "You, too, can be your own boss" and you've got to really make sure you're cut out for that, that you can really motivate yourself and focus. I don't know that most of the articles out there really talk about that; they talk about the small percentage of people whose [businesses] took off and became millionaires and it's not always that way. It takes a lot of tenacity and a lot of self-discipline.  It's difficult but it's also rewarding.