LIVING section, September 8, 1996

It takes Lou's Village to raise two 

children - and vice versa

YOU HEAR of people "growing up in the business."

Tom and Tim Muller grew up in the business. And grew up with the business. And the business grew up with them.

The Mullers own and operate Lou's Village, a venerable San Jose restaurant celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. As is Tom, who, like the restarurant, was born in 1946. And with Tim coming along only four years later, and with both siblings spending their formative years in and around the place, Lou's is as much a part of their lives as they are of its.

They speak fondly of their shared history.

"Our grandfather, Lou Santoro, and Paul Polizzi had been in the San Jose Fire Department together and retired after 25 years," Tom relates. "I guess like most firemen they thought they could cook, so with Lou Ferro they opened this place. Our father, Frank Muller, got out of the service after World War II and became a carpenter, but he started getting big thumbs from hitting himself a lot. So he went to work here for our grandfather, doing everything: janitor, bartender, you name it."

Frank married Lou's daughter, and the families involved worked it as a family business. "Our parents (Frank and wife, Gloria) would primarily work the days," Tim notes. "Our grandparents (the Santoros, Lou and Alvina) would work the evenings. One thing led to another, and in 1951, the partners got out of the business and our grandfather and father took it over. It's been in the family ever since."

It wasn't originally a big place, the restaurant on San Carlos Street in San Jose's Midtown - about 5,500 square feet, with much of that area being taken up by a stage for live entertainment and a dance floor. Lou's was as much a nightclub as a restaurant in those days, and its walls still are lined with photographs of entertainers who performed there:

There's a shot of Lucille Ball, without Desi Arnaz, at one of the tables. Another of Lenny and Honey Bruce, working as a duo. Black-and-white publicity shots of Joaquin Garay, the Ink Spots, the King Sisters, Marty Allen, Phil Ford and Mimi Hines, the Gaylords, Betty Furness, Rusty Draper. There's also a shot of a slinky cabaret singer who performed as Lee Arno, better known today as Los Gatos developer Diane Ogilvie, her real name.

Lou's Village was one of San Jose's top entertainment spots back then, and the Muller kids loved it. "I used to play with all the instruments," Tom notes, "anything left on the bandstand." Tim adds, "He'd jump on the piano, I'd jump on the drums. We used to do that on Sundays, and drive the musicians crazy. They'd come back on Tuesday and holler, 'Who's been fooling with our stuff? You kids!'"

The experience left a lasting impression on them. Tim stuck with the drums through high school, when he played in a rock'n'roll band. Tom pursued a professional music career after college before returning to the restaurant full time. He still composes music and is fondly remembered for a 1987 concert at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts, where he played piano to Chuck Berry's guitar in a classic rock'n'roll concert.

TV killed Village acts

Entertainment, though, didn't have a lasting effect at Lou's Village. "Television eventually killed it," Tim explains. Coping with changing times and declining audiences, the families diversified into the catering business in the mid-'50s and by 1961 had removed the stage and dance floor.

Through it all, the kids worked.

"We used to have barbecue grounds next door," Tim recalls. "We'd do summer picnics, barbecues, and we kids would serve the food. We'd go to catering parties with our dad. Those are the memories I have as a kid - good family work."

The gregariousness of their father also made Lou's Village a magnet for the city's political and business leaders. "I can remeber being in the bar when I was 6 or 7 and seeing these guys throwing silver dollars around," Tom says. "Silver dollars were the big thing in those days. It was a whole other world."

"San Jose was a lot smaller town - and simpler," Tim agrees. "I think it was easier to run a business in those days, even though it was not easy. It still isn't easy today."

Education key to survival

Both brothers cite education as an aid to meeting the challenge of business survival.

Tom went to Bellarmine College Prep, got a degree in radio-TV from San Jose State University and then served three years as a naval officer. He then tried music as a professional career, before returning to the restaurant in 1976.

Tim went to Mitty High School, attended San Jose City College and San Jose State, where he played football and got a bachelor's degree in business administration, and then went on to get a master's in business administration from Santa Clara University. He never left the restaurant business, and today handles the daily operations at Lou's while his brother does the marketing.

Their grandmother continued to oversee the kitchen until her death in 1978. "She left big shoes to fill," Tim says. And when Frank Muller died in 1992, his sons and their mother picked up the reins.

"You can find restaurants that have been around for 80 or 100 years somewhere," Tom notes, "but they're on their 18th owner. We're still the original family."

Perserverance - and solid business decisions over that half-century - have helped keep Lou's Village in business. In 1965, it started serving seafood, a menu emphasis it still maintains, and business tripled. In 1982, a banquet kitchen was added, and in 1989, the restaurant was remodeled and expanded to give it more than 10,000 square feet of banquet and meeting space. The main dining and bar areas have been renovated twice in the '90s alone. "Mrs. Winchester's restaurant," Tom jokes. But such improvements have been necessary to remain competitive.

More hotels, More dining

"Thank God the city of San Jose has grown to the point where it can support as many eating establishments as it has today," says Tim. "Even though there are too many of them, between fast food and fine dining. But the good news is that there are more hotels. If someone had told me 15 years ago that hotels would aid our dining business, I wouldn't have believed them. But in essence they do. There are conventions in town. They help. They bring another segment into town that normally isn't here."

"I think the best thing for us has been the arena," Tom adds. "For the Neil Diamond concerts, we did 250 shuttles (the restaurant, which offers free parking, also provides free shuttle rides for dinner customers to the arena and back). We're going to do the same thing with the Sharks and Warriors. There's a restaurant in Detroit, located quite a way from its arena, and during the hockey season they have four school buses hauling fans back and forth. We're willing to grow."

The brothers keep active in civic affairs to encourage that growth. Tim is president of the San Carlos Street improvement district and a director of the valley's restaurant association. Tom has been a director of the San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau, and was a founder of Alive After 5 (now Downtown Arts and Dining)'

Opinions on improving city

And they're not shy about offering opinions on how the city, and business, could be improved.

"I've been saying for the past 11 years that it doesn't make any difference how many restaurants you add to downtown San Jose if the city doesn't market them," notes Tom. "I don't care how many festivals or jazz concerts on Thursdays you have. They're good things, but they're one-time, and it takes an ongoing, concerted effort to remind people of the city's restaurants and other attractions."

He also cites the pushcart and fast-food booths set up at festivals and asks, "Is the city trying to develop a market for fast-food carts on Plaza de Cesar Chavez or nurture permanent restaurant businesses?"

"I think the key to the future of San Jose," Tim adds, "in terms of the service sector, is developing some major source of tourism. That's the one thing missing from our area. If that ever can be developed, then we'll have something."

In the meantime, they say they'll continue to do whatever's necessary to keep the family retaurant competitive, to keep it attractive to new customers as well as to the old-line political and business figures who still are its regulars. Both agree that it hasn't been - and won't be - easy. No longer dewy-eyed innocents, they know the cost in long hours and hard work.

An 'interesting' business

"We've just been through a long winter in the restaurant business here," Tom says, referring to the recession of the early '90s. "And we've had a lot of competition over the last 10 years, a lot of that subsidized, directly or indirectly, by redevelopment building projects."

"It happened," says Tim. "That's a fact of life, and you just have to move on. That's what we've tried to do. It's an 'interesting' (he pointedly puts oral quotation marks around the adjective) business. Summer - July and August - was traditionally slow. But we're looking forward to a better fall."

Tim's son Michael, a fourth-grader, passes through the dining room. Tim says he likes helping out there, just as he did at that age.

So the next question seems obvious: Would the brothers mind if there were a third generation in the business?

You can almost see the brothers mentally assessing the hard labor it has taken to get Lou's Village to the half-century mark. Proud as they are for the business surviving all these years but mindful of the struggles they've had, Tom sums up the answer for both of them: "I'd mind."

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