DETROIT -- Visit Detroit's Eastern Market district, about a mile northeast of downtown, any Saturday morning and you'll likely see a line of people waiting to eat breakfast at the popular Russell Street Deli, which not long ago celebrated its 25th year in business.
But the crowded tables and loyal customers may give a false impression that deli owners Ben Hall and Jason Murphy have solved the secret of business success in Detroit.
The truth, the owners say, is more sobering.
Like other Detroit small-business owners, Hall and Murphy say the experience has been a mix of highs and lows, moments of exhilaration with gut-wrenching worries over cash flow and making payroll. Long hours and constant fretting over expenses and how to introduce new products remain a never-ending part of a business owner's lot.
At a time when Detroit celebrates the entrepreneurial culture with splashy contests that award $50,000 to winning startup ideas, stories of long-term business survival paint a real-life picture of pain and perseverance.
Clearly, it takes more than a clever idea or catchy product to make a go of a small business in Detroit.
The Detroit Free Press recently interviewed owners of three longtime successful Detroit small businesses. Besides Hall and Murphy, they include Bernard White of White Construction and Christina Lovio-George of the Lovio-George public relations firm. They have survived in the city for at least 25 years, and all are well-known in their fields.
But despite apparent success and longevity, the owners offered a surprisingly sober assessment of owning a small business. The firms are smaller now than at their peak years, in terms of either revenue or employee head count, and sometimes dramatically smaller.
These firms show that running a small business in Detroit requires smarts and stamina -- and can offer lessons for those hoping to start their own firms.
Hall and Murphy started as dishwashers at the Russell Street Deli in the mid-1990s, working summers and studying Quaker-oriented mediation at a New England college during the school year. Later, they received master's of fine arts degrees before eventually buying out the deli's previous owner.
Over the past decade, they've offered employees health benefits and pay well above the minimum wages offered at fast-food outlets. They've also started successful catering and wholesale businesses, and have been planning to open a new restaurant.
But the revival of Eastern Market in recent years, including the renovation of market sheds and the rise of a food-oriented entrepreneurial culture in Detroit, has been a mixed blessing. Among other things, the long-running construction work at the market has crimped access to the deli. Introducing a new menu item is always fraught with concern.
"What if people just don't get it?" Hall said. "What if we can't market it properly?"
Even the arrival of food trucks in Eastern Market, celebrated by many as a sign of Detroit's growing vibrancy, cut into the trade of existing businesses like Russell Street Deli.
Hall and Murphy say they've even considered closing the deli if their wholesale line keeps growing and the new restaurant west of downtown does well. That admission might shock many of their regulars who line up outside the deli's door on Saturday morning waiting for a table.
"Move slowly," Hall advises new entrepreneurs. Murphy agrees. "We don't have a lot of room for error," he said. "If we're not careful, we're going to make a $50,000 mistake."
Graduating with a degree in civil engineering from Lawrence Technological University, located in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Bernard White spent his early professional years with big local contracting firms. He started his own firm in 1989, working tiny jobs before eventually landing bigger work.
He benefited from being a minority-owned Detroit-based business just as the city was looking for qualified minority-member contractors. White won contracts at the Detroit Zoo, Comerica Park (home of Major League Baseball's Detroit Tigers), Ford Field (home of the National Football League's Lions), Detroit's new police headquarters, and the future home of the National Hockey League's Red Wings, among other projects.
But affirmative action has a downside, too.
"Some people in the mainstream might think that White Construction has done enough," he said. He perceives an attitude of "let's help someone else" or "he's done pretty good for a black guy." Once given the opportunities, "we have to excel," he said. "We did a great job on everything, to a lot of folks' surprise, candidly."
For all the ups and downs of owning his own firm, White remains happy that he took the risk.
"I didn't want to wake up and be 60 years old, which I will be this year, and say I wished I had given it a shot," he said.
Christina Lovio-George, the daughter of a West Virginia coal miner who moved his family to Detroit a half-century ago, got her start in public relations in the 1970s working for Wayne State University. A stint with one of former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin's campaigns followed before she launched her own firm in 1982, all while going to night school at Wayne State.
From the beginning, her firm, lodged in a historic house in the city's Midtown district, has been dedicated to "really changing perceptions and hopefully changing behavior about Detroit."
Her big break came when Lovio-George won the job of promoting the Detroit 300 tricentennial celebrations in 2001. The firm's promotional work helped popularize the event and attract a million people downtown for fireworks, concerts and tall ships.
"Overnight from that, our profile and our client base changed," she said.
But then the recession hit hard. Lovio-George estimated that about 40 percent of her bookings evaporated. Everyone took a pay cut, and she didn't replace staff members who left. The firm went from 18 workers just before the crash to half that, but has gained a few back since then.
"You can't work here [in Detroit] and not be in love with this town. You won't last," she says. "You have to feel that it's work that's worth doing. And the work that's worth doing to me is always making a contribution to the city I love, that gave me so much."
SundayMonday Business on 06/14/2015