Easy G will hold its annual golf tournament on Sunday, September 6, at the Concordia Golf & Wellness Country Club. The 4-Person Scramble format has cash prizes for the top teams as well as Easy G gift cards for specialized shots. Easy G will donate $3,000 from the event to the Concordia Fireworks Display.
You can register your team for the golf tournament at Easy G on Main Street.
After the golf tournament, Easy G is throwing a party at the Broadway Plaza. Starting at 3 p.m., there will be games and prizes for the kids. The band Soul Preachers will perform from 6-8 p.m. There will be a beer garden at the Plaza until the band finishes.
A second band, Tyler Jensen, will perform at Easy G beginning at 9 p.m. Prizes and 10th anniversary merchandise will be given away through the evening.
Tom Gennette and Chad Sallman, the owners of Easy G, sat down with the Blade-Empire and took a look back at the creation of their sports bar and grill and its success.
"I had just moved back here, and there really wasn't a sports bar in town," said Sallman. "There were places to go, but not really the kind of gathering place I had in mind. I kept talking about what a great idea it would be to have a sports bar in Concordia. I talked about it for five years, really to the point everybody was tired of hearing me talk about it. And then in 2013 Tom (Gennette) was getting ready to retire, and he said to me, 'Let's do it.'"
"We looked at several spots on Main Street," said Gennette. "But I knew the Broadway Plaza was going to happen, and I thought that would really be a big thing, so I bought the building right across the street from it."
If anyone has any doubts or misconceptions about the risks Sallman and Gennette took to create Easy G, here's some sobering statistics: On average, about 30% of restaurants fail in their first year. Over half of all new restaurants in the United States are out of business within three years.
Sallman's and Gennette's plan for Easy G was ambitious and, financially, they were hampered from the start. Sallman had just begun building his construction company, and Gennette was moving into retirement. Money was tight. In fact, there was none. Gennette mortgaged his house to get the project off the ground.
What followed next was two years of sweat equity work, a shoestring budget, and financial stress that turned the building at 107 West 6th Street into a sports bar and grill.
"I'll be honest with you, there were some real panic moments," Sallman said. "To completely remodel the place and then buy all the equipment, and then hire staff... I was looking at all our bills, and we just didn't have enough money. We had borrowed every dollar we could, so we started using our credit cards. I mean, we literally pushed all our chips into the middle of the table and rolled the dice with this thing. It was the biggest gamble of our lives."
Gennette and Sallman went to bars in Manhattan and Salina to see what they were doing. "We had specific ideas in mind, and Tom and I went into these bars to see what they were doing," Sallman said. "We saw things we liked and didn't like; things we wanted for Easy G, and what we didn't want. I mean, I would take out my phone and discreetly take a photo of something I liked."
Beyond the type of food they would serve and the 23 large screen TVs tuned to sports, the planning and design of Easy G was specific to the original, detailed idea, even down to the height of the tables where customers would sit and the length of the bar that bartenders would serve from. For all of it, Sallman had a single mantra in mind: "I wanted it to be a place that you could bring your grandkids or your grandparents," he said.
"My nephew Ty (Gennette) was a big part of us getting this thing going," Gennette said. "He ran the bar for a number of years and really helped us build it up."
The tremendous risks they took - and the belief in their dream - paid off beyond their wildest expectations. 10 years after its grand opening, Easy G is a massive hit and now anchors the east side of Concordia's Main Street. It has become a gathering spot for customers from all over north central Kansas, and beyond.
"The community really embraced Easy G," Gennette said. "It's succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. It's what we dreamed of and, really, in a lot of ways, it's beyond what I imagined. I thought we'd have a nice place to watch games. The food side of it really changed what the bar was all about and made this a great place to come and eat. But we don't just sit around and accept it; we're always trying to improve as we go along. And our number one goal will always be the same: treat the customer right."
Customers - especially sports fans - come for the Easy G ambience and wide selection of sports on all the TVs, but it's the food that keeps them coming back.
"The kitchen is the heart of Easy G," Gennette said. "It's what keeps bringing people in."
"Having F&A right here in town is such a big help," Sallman added. "We are so grateful for the support they've given us. If we need something last minute, they bring it here right away. When all our freezers went down, they let us store our stuff in their freezers. It's been just a great relationship for Easy G and F&A."
Easy G has weathered some difficult times over the past decade, including a lightning strike that fried every electronic device in the building. But nothing compared to the COVID years.
"You try to plan for every contingency; you think about what to do in emergency situations," Sallman said. "But I don't know of anybody who had planned to deal with a worldwide pandemic. I mean, for some food places it was ok because they had delivery or a drive-thru. We had none of that. We lost 95% of our income. It was a scary thing. We'd only been open a few years. We still had a lot of debt. We weren't on death's door, but it was a real hard punch in the gut. But we survived."
For both Gennette and Sallman, the future is bright. Anything can happen - especially in the restaurant business - but they have no plans to ever sell the bar. "This is a family business, and it'll stay that way," Gennette said. "We'll go on for however long the town wants us."
Gennette and Sallman spoke fondly of their staff over the years, from servers to kitchen help. "A big thank you to our staff," Sallman said. "You can't do something like this without a great staff. We've really been blessed with the staff we've had here over the years. They're a big part of the success we've had."
And, most importantly, Gennette and Sallman wanted to express their sincere gratitude to the communities that have supported their dream for the past decade. "A heartfelt thank you to all of Cloud County, and beyond," Gennette said. "We believed in something, and we hoped the communities would too, and it's turned out really well so far. We couldn't do this without the great support we've had from so many people."
