Now in its seventh year, Good Eggs is immensely popular with locals,
seasonal homeowners, and tourists of all ages and walks of life, as evidenced
by the line frequently spilling out the door. The menu is simple: three
styles of made-to-order omelet wraps. While this might sound limiting
in appeal, it actually easily pleases all palates due to the variety of
items you can choose to have – or not – in your wrap. It can
also please the same customer over and over again – just ask local
real estate broker Kevin Nordahl, winner of the first Good Eggs Customer
of the Year award in 2001, who ate there nearly every day that season
and is still there multiple times weekly.
Despite its laid-back atmosphere and décor – the restaurant
is predominantly decorated with surfer and bike gear, with some funky
art thrown in – Good Eggs is highly organized: You need to go in
the IN door – the smaller one on the left, not the French OUT doors
– in order to place yourself in line correctly. Then, you can serve
yourself coffee, or, in summertime, order a fresh fruit smoothie. When
the line has moved along enough such that the grill has room for your
wrap, you answer the questions Joel (or whomever is cooking) asks you,
when he asks them. No jumping ahead on answers – he’s cooking
eight breakfast wraps at once, and can’t/won’t remember which
flavor tortilla you want when he’s still trying to figure out who
is having which vegetables.
Originally from Moorhead, Minnesota, Joel came to Door County by way of
a college roommate whose parents had a condo in Egg Harbor. His roommate
knew Joel was a sailor and a cyclist, and introduced him to “the
boathouse boys” at Nicolet Beach in Peninsula State Park, who put
him to work that and subsequent summers renting and maintaining the beach
bike fleet, teaching and rescuing sailors, and scrubbing paddleboats.
“Always having a lot of fun here” kept Joel coming back every
season, even if it wasn’t clear to him after college or even in
the ensuing handful of years that he wanted Door County to be his home
base. He did know, though, he “wanted to find a beautiful place
to live instead of just getting a job and ending up living wherever that
job was,” he says. “After living in the Rockies and on the
East Coast, and visiting Central America, Japan, and other places, some
of my undergraduate coursework in colonialism started to register with
my own experiences – particularly the recognition of the tie indigenous
populations have historically had to the land, the place they live –
and it started to dawn on me that I’m very much a Midwesterner.
Door County then became an obvious choice to call ‘home.’”
Those early work experiences in Door County were important in shaping
Joel in three ways. First, he learned a great deal about customer service.
Second, he became attracted to the concept of self-employment, or, more
aptly, “not getting hassled by ‘the man.’” Finally,
Joel took on second jobs where he learned the restaurant business. Having
saved enough money teaching English in Japan to buy an old school bus,
Joel combined those lessons of self-employment and service to create a
“charter sleeper coach ski tour bus machine manic travel service.”
He says, “For a few years, I waited tables to finance this hair-brained
adventure – a constantly breaking-down bus always meant not breaking
even – but everybody always had so much fun! I quit when I came
back from a harrowing trip to Steamboat to learn a close friend of mine
had died. The risks of the road seemed different after that.”
About 10 years ago, in the midst of “that fantastical fiasco of
a financial failure,” waiting tables and doing some writing for
the Peninsula Pulse, Joel met Fred Alley, a founder, writer, actor, and
driving force behind American Folklore Theatre. On meeting Fred, Joel
says, “I was writing a column then, but Fred was actually interested
in a classified I had written where I described the car I was selling
as UNSAFE. We became fast friends.” Fred acted as a mentor to Joel
with regard to his writing as well as life in general. Joel explains,
“After the bus business ended, I was describing myself as ‘between
projects.’ I was living out at Fred’s farm in the winter then,
and Fred and I would talk about John Irving’s novel The Cider House
Rules and Homer’s need to ‘be of use.’ Fred had pointed
out to me, ‘You know, you can always be better at what you’re
doing now,’ but I wanted to do more. Fred thought the casual ‘breakfast
joint’ niche was wide open in Door County, and that if I could make
the food he could help bring in the crowd. And make sure the taxes got
paid on time!” Joel was particularly motivated to do a project with
Fred, his previous experience having made him realize “partnering
with someone much more talented than you was the clever thing to do.”
The partnership didn’t work as planned, though. On May 1, 2001,
exactly one month after the business papers were signed and weeks before
Good Eggs was to open, Fred Alley tragically passed away. Although devastated
by the loss of his friend and business partner, Joel notes, “Fred
had an amazing way of steamrolling through work – during that one
month we were business partners, he managed to get our change of use permit,
and much of the basic groundwork taken care of for establishing the restaurant.
I decided Good Eggs was a gift and to run with it.” In developing
the Good Eggs concept with Fred, Joel says, “We wanted to have a
very egalitarian restaurant, one that would serve and please everybody
in the same manner.”
Joel notes the biggest challenge he faces is to run the same restaurant
in the shoulder seasons – “where I’m the only one working,
and I’m only serving 20 wraps a day” – as in the high
season, with three or four employees working, serving 200 wraps a day.
Finding staff is also a problem, as for many Door County businesses, and
so is managing them well. “That’s been my biggest learning
experience at the restaurant, so far,” says Joel. “Recognizing
that, as much as I knew about service from waiting tables, I needed to
learn how to serve the employees who serve my customers.” Joel remembers
Fred frequently saying, “Life is too hard to be anything but kind.”
Joel tries, though he knows he doesn’t always succeed, to keep that
in mind with both staff and customer interactions, attempting to “make
the disposition of the restaurant reflect that sentiment.” And,
while the seasonality of Door County’s economy is a challenge, it
is one Joel enjoys: “By the end of October, I’m over seeing
people, and by May I’m excited to see them again. That hasn’t
changed in six or seven years.”
Other things have changed, though. The business, allowing him in the early
years to go ski-bumming in the winter, now allows him to live year round
in the place he loves, with the person he loves; this spring Joel married
Lauren Gress, who followed some of the same Door County paths as Joel,
waiting tables and working for the “boathouse boys” as guide
instructor and store manager. Her current job as a teacher at Gibraltar
Area Schools leaves her summers off to be the partner Joel never had at
Good Eggs. Joel likes this new personal rootedness, as well as his work:
“It’s a trip running a business that people come back to year
after year on their vacations, watching their families grow up, seeing
14-year old kids that I remember feeding when they were seven. I’m
really enjoying this.”
