‘Regular-dressed folks’ said target market for eatery
Father and son Jim, left, and Peter Demos, right, stand in the dining room March 6 at Demos’ Steak and Spaghetti House in Murfreesboro.
Michelle Willard, Daily News Journal, March 8, 2015
MURFREESBORO — When Demos’ Restaurant opened Dec. 12, 1989, it wasn’t an instant success.
“We do more customers in a day now than we did in a week then,” said Peter Demos, president of Demos’ Restaurants.
Peter Demos said his father and founder of the restaurant chain Jim Demos wanted the restaurant to be successful, so he chased people down in the parking lot.
Jim Demos smiled at the memory.
He recalled watching a car pull into the parking lot of the then new Demos’ Steak & Spaghetti House on Broad Street in Murfreesboro and seeing it circle and drive out.
Jim Demos said he jumped in his car and chased the would-be customers to another restaurant. He then asked them why they didn’t eat at his new restaurant.
“They said, ‘we aren’t dressed nice enough,’” Peter Demos said, explaining that in 1989 there wasn’t another restaurant in town that made its wait staff wear white shirts with ties or set the table with cloth napkins and tablecloths.
Jim Demos said the response hit him like a revelation. He didn’t want a fancy restaurant, he wanted a good restaurant.
“People would ask if they need to wear a coat and tie,” he said. “I just wanted regular dressed folks.” At that moment, Jim Demos decided he would start wearing short sleeves to work to show his customers that they didn’t have to dress up, he said.
And it worked.
Demos’ Steak & Spaghetti House has grown from the first restaurant in Murfreesboro to four locations in Middle Tennessee and Peter Demos has launched his own concept, Peter D’s on Medical Center Parkway.
Jim Demos said the concept for the restaurant came to him like a revelation too.
He said he saw a restaurant with “steak and spaghetti house” in the name.
“Nobody had that. Everywhere was steak and potato,” Jim Demos said, adding he had family recipes for spaghetti sauces that he thought would sell well.
And so Demos’ Steak and Spaghetti House was born.
“We dreamed of having a place that had food so damn good it was addictive,” Jim Demos said.
His dream was realized, customer Sloan Frederick said as she ate an early dinner Friday with her parents.
The Fredericks always eat at the restaurant when they come to Murfreesboro from their home in Tullahoma.
“If we come to Murfreesboro, I don’t even have to ask where we are going,” Mike Frederick said.
Sloan Frederick chimed in saying she likes it because the food is always good and the service in always excellent.
“He had no idea it would be so successful. He just wanted something to earn a little money,” Peter Demos said.
Both men attribute the restaurant’s success to the Demos family matriarch, Doris Demos.
“She never understood the shadow she cast,” Peter Demos said about his mother.
While Jim Demos focused on running the back of the house, Doris Demos focused on the front with a laser-like focus on customer service.
Doris Demos walked the dining room, checking drink levels and making sure the customers were taken care off, every day until the day she died.
“Doris was the heart of the restaurant and I was the mechanic,” Jim Demos said.
“I wanted to have a little old restaurant and travel when we wanted to. But you can’t stop a rocket once it’s in flight.”
JIM DEMOS
Demos’ founder