Venus de Milo Celebrates 50th Anniversary
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Fifty years is a long time for any company to be in business, let alone one as large as the Venus de Milo and in an industry as volatile as hospitality. They’ve been successfully serving the Rhode Island and Massachusetts public since 1960 and continue to grow. There are plans to expand the bar and restaurant side of the business, while still putting on some of the biggest events in the area. I had the opportunity to sit down with President Monte Ferris to talk about his father Monsour’s humble beginnings and their plans for the future. It’s very much a classic American dream story.
Monsour Ferris worked three jobs during the Great Depression one was managing a bowling alley which was eventually taken from by eminent domain to put in the Braga Bridge. So he bought land in Swansea to build a thirty-lane bowling alley, but the bank would only give him money for twenty lanes. Ferris’ brother-in-law Charlie had some restaurant experience and he convinced Ferris to add a lounge.
So now there’s a restaurant, but not that classic menu that has endured for fifty years. One day Monsour Ferris went to a hotel in Fall River and tasted this soup. He went in the kitchen and found the chef, who told him to get out of his kitchen. Ferris persisted until he hired Chef Joseph DaRosa and to this day most of the recipes in use came from him.GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
At one point a ten-pin bowling alley opened two miles away. In that one summer the Venus de Milo lost 70% of their business to them. But Monsour Ferris persisted and the business thrived. Monte Ferris attributes that to the key people that his dad found to work there. The key word is loyalty. There are currently two employees who’ve been with the Venus de Milo for more than forty years, seventeen people who have been working there thirty years or more and twenty who have been there over twenty years.
Monte Ferris is very proud of that loyalty for also ensuring consistency and it’s the foundation for being able to move forward. One of the things they plan on growing is their daily restaurant business, which has been there at the Venus de Milo for forty years, but now they want it to be a social destination. They are working with Kyla Coburn Designs (Loie Fuller, The Avery) to make it look like a restaurant and not, as Ferris said, a restaurant at a banquet hall.
I will head back to the Venus to check out the restaurant and see what changes occur. It should be interesting to see how a fifty-year-old business, especially one that is so of its time as the Venus de Milo, will grow with the twenty-first century. Having met Monte Ferris and heard the story of their first fifty years it’s not hard to see that persistence continuing, to keep the business going at least another fifty years, if not many more.
