This business started as a dive-on-the-pier

Newport, Oregon: In this episode of the show, we continue our walk down the Main Streets of America to see how one person with a vision has transformed the town where she was born and where she has chosen to stay. Life here is so rich with the intangibles that even her children have returned to this little seaport town and are helping to build the business and family legacy.

Here you find an extraordinary employer-employee partnership.
 
Our cities and towns are looking more and more alike because big business tends to homogenize. Entrepreneurs diversify. They reach into their soul to find something new. Wherever Cindy McEntee opens a restaurant along the coast of Oregon, she adds uniqueness, personality and charm.  Mo's is an icon on the West Coast, and it is just a chowder house.

But this is also a place where over 200 people (during high season) will generate $3.5 million in annual sales. It is a home away from home. And, it has become a destination eating place. It is Mo's Chowder. And, the person who made her grandmother's "business" a business is Cindy McEntee.

Cindy McEntee came to our attention because she was the state of Oregon's Small Business Person of the Year. Then, when we looked further, we found many more awards and citations. To be selected as the study for a show, a business must come up on everyone's list as being " ... loved by their community and respected within their industry."

We first met Cindy in the White House in June of 2001 when she was named Oregon's Small Business Person of the Year and she was the first runner up for the National Small Business Person of the Year award.

From a little joint on a narrow little street to the big White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, we discover how a fisherman's hangout becomes a national treasure.

View all the video clips from this episode of the show...

Be a place people enjoy hanging around.

Cindy has made Mo’s an attractive, fun place to be and has worked hard to promote tourism in Newport. Mo's Chowder is the anchor of modern tourism in Newport, Oregon. And tourism is new to Newport which is hard to believe now. It is an old fishing town. It is still a working port with all the sights and smells you can imagine that come with hauling in fish from the sea. As the fishing industry has changed, there is less processing going on in Newport. At the same time, the city fathers (and that includes Cindy) have been working on making the waterfront attractive so tourist will come and watch the fishermen and spend some money in the town.

How does Cindy make Newport special? Artwork. She recruited artists to paint murals. Some of the world's most famous have painted large surfaces on Newport's waterfront buildings. Cindy has commissioned an artist to do a bronze statue of Mo and other business owners who are doing their part to make their storefronts attractive but at the same time keep the spirit of the working port.

Cindy recognized that "we eat where our children want to eat," and she made her eateries children-friendly. In some businesses, the user of the product or service is not the same person as the buyer of the product or service. This situation requires dual marketing strategies influencing both the buyer and the user. Chuck E. Cheese combined pizza with indoor playgrounds, two of children's favorites. This is a classic example of a business marketing to the user who in turn pressures the buyer, resulting in revenues and profits to the seller.

  Ref: e1610p977