A Conversation With ... Pat Duran

Metropolitan Grill is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month. You purchased the restaurant in 2006. Tell me about the longevity of Metropolitan Grill.
I started with the company in 2001 as the bartender/bar manager position, so it goes back for me, seems like a lifetime ago. I think it is one of those fun, cool staples that really highlights Springfield, Missouri, as this amazing culinary mecca, hidden jewel of the Ozarks that holds itself really well. A big thank you to Springfield for all their amazing support over these last 30 years.

How would you describe the food at Metro Grill, your approach, and how has that shifted over the years?
It’s changed dramatically. When I first started out with the company, we were primarily an Italian place. The previous owner, Fred Coco, was from The Hill in St. Louis, the Italian district. My background is from northern New Mexico and I have a Hispanic father, an Anglo mother, and then my time in culinary school – you kind of mash it all together and you end up with this eclectic, fine dining mix with a little bit of Fred’s stuff just to stay on track with the old Metropolitan Grill and pay tribute to the way we started. I’m kind of culinary ADD. I can’t keep the same menu very long. We like to challenge ourselves to make new stuff all the time. Well over 600 menu items later, it’s definitely evolved. As you see on the menu, everything’s named after customers, so you want to pay great homage to them.

Your space on the far side of the building has been different concepts over the years – Vespa Kitchen, Hard Knox BBQ – and now you have a new venture with a big pizza oven. Tell me about this new Champagne and pizza spot.
That space has been kind of my way to explore. It’s my playground. Starting out being Vespa diner, I love to cook breakfast. It’s actually my favorite meal to cook as a chef. It did really well. Then my attention shifted toward barbecue. I started doing competition barbecue. Now, in its final version as Cheri’s Pizza & Champagne Lounge, that represents my relationship with my wife and the love affair she has with Champagne and pizza. This place doesn’t exist without my wife, Cheri.

What kind of pizza are you serving?
We serve primarily what we call New York Neapolitan style. I sent my middle daughter, Katrina, to a pizza school in Staten Island, New York. The oven itself is from Italy, so that’s kind of the combination of the two. That high-heat, wood-fired oven style of pizza along with that New York attitude and flair that comes from that culture of pizza.

One of the challenges restaurants are facing is that the cost of food has increased so significantly. Bureau of Labor Statistics data has that at about 29% in the last four years. Menu prices have increased about 27% to find that margin of profitability needed. What have you experienced? Have you managed to keep a healthy margin?
We normally have formulas that we use that tell us where we need to be in profits to be able to stay open and stay viable, and then to be able to live to fight another day in this industry. But those have all gone away. Those norm percentages we used to use are now giving away to much higher food cost prices and labor prices. It’s a dance. We’ve been able to ... move the menu items around in a way that creates some levels of profit and affordability on the customer side. At the end of the day, all these price increases get passed on. It seems to have leveled out a little bit right now. We’ve been able to be consistent now for probably the last half of the year. Coming up on the holiday season, because of the supply and demand, we are starting to see the increases again, especially in the beef market. We’re very fortunate in the Midwest that we have a lot of great beef right here in our backyard. On the other side, a lot of these produce items really can kick us pretty hard with their big fluctuations. It was the main reason I probably shut down my barbecue place because the meat just got so expensive that the looks on people’s faces when you had to say, “It’s going to be $25 for your barbecue dinner today.” It took the fun out of it for me.

The BLS finds labor costs are up about 31% over the past four years. This month, Missouri voters approved another increase to minimum wage. What are you dealing with in terms of finding high-quality workers and labor costs?
Right now, I would say the economy is dictating that. There’s a lot of people looking for jobs as opposed to pre-pandemic, pandemic era. You were looking for anybody with a heartbeat at that point. But now we’re back to a market where people are actually actively looking for employment again, qualified people. I know what minimum wage is in Springfield and always have, and I think the industry has always paid more than minimum wage. You’re maximizing their wages as much as you possibly can because you want them to have the best life possible. That’s probably the most painful part to know that you’re paying so much out and watching them struggle now more than ever. You can continue to increase wages, but prices go with it.

Four of your kids are working here. Do you have thoughts on when you would plan to exit the business?
Not really, honestly. This business is more of a disease a lot of times, it seems like an addiction of sorts. I love what I do. I still come in here every day and I throw a party for my friends and family. The pandemic taught us to slow down. It taught us that less is more. I went ahead and closed my Great American Taco businesses just because I wanted a quality of life back. Having multiple businesses, to me, was just more than what it was worth in the long run.