3 area restaurateurs create Waterside Restaurant Group

A trio of restaurateurs behind seven Florida establishments have joined forces to form Waterside Restaurant Group. Two of the restaurants are in the Sarasota-Bradenton area.

Pop’s Sunset Grill of Nokomis and Woody’s River Roo of Ellenton are among the seven restaurants that are now part of Waterside Restaurant Group. 

The others are Snooks Bayside in Key Largo, Island Fish Company in Marathon, Lazy Days of Islamorada, Kiki’s Sandbar of Little Torch Key, and Ziggie and Mad Dogs of Islamorada.

Partners in the restaurant group are Joe Farrell, owner of Pop's Sunset Grill; Mark Vasturo, who owns Wood’s River Roo and other restaurants; and Randy Kassewitz, who has also owned multiple eateries, including Ziggie and Mad Dogs. All have been in the business for decades, a release states. 

“We weren't really competitors,” Farrell says, but their restaurants had “very similar ideas” — most are waterfront, have tiki huts and are anchored in tourist areas.

“The more we got together, the more we thought there are some benefits, not the least of which is financial — we’d get better rates — by having a bigger buying group. which allows us not to elevate pricing. It also spreads our risk in a much better way,” Farrell says. 

“When I’m staring down the nose of [Hurricane] Milton and he has the capacity of wiping the restaurant out," Farrell says, "in case of some catastrophic event, the [group] can hold it up and keep your employees paid.”

Each partner brings different strengths to the group, he says. Vasturo is “very detail-oriented” and a great manager of multiple high-volume restaurants, according to Farrell. Kassewitz is “focused on numbers and in an operation this size — with close to 1,000 employees — restaurants are run by managing pennies not dollars,” Farrell says. 

His expertise is in customer experience and space utilization, Farrell says.

“What has worked at Pop’s is keeping an eye on what the customer wants. I try to put my head into that element: What do I want to see next, what is my next experience?” says Farrell, whose restaurant has live music seven days a week and has undergone “nine mini-expansions in the last four years” to create a better experience for customers. One driver of that was the waiting list that the eatery often has for guests to get a table. Pop’s ensures there is merchandise available for customers to buy (it accounts for 10% of sales, he says) and views where they can soak up the sights of dolphins nearby.

“We’re always innovating,” Farrell says. “Every month, there's something we're doing. But now some of the new stuff is going to come from my collaboration with the other restaurants.”

Going forward, businesses within Waterside Restaurant Group may share signature items from their menus. For example, Farrell says, Pop’s serves up a shrimp rangoon that is exceptionally popular and could appear at the other eateries within the group. Likewise, Lazy Days has a special fish preparation between Mediterranean and a piccata-style topping that is a hit with customers.

”There are certain things like that that have been tried and tested [that] we’re going to introduce at Pop’s,” Farrell says.

Each restaurant will run independently with its own management, with the partners overseeing the group, Farrell says.

The partnership will be mainly behind-the-scenes, so guests can expect business to continue as usual, according to Farrell. He and his wife, Kristen, will continue to base their operations at Pop’s Sunset Grill, which he says serves more than half a million customers a year.

“This doesn't create anything different other than we’re going to continue to try to make it a better and better experience,” Farrell says. “People hear ‘merger’ and think ‘sell.’ We did not sell. We’re not going anywhere. We’re still Pops, and Kristen and I are still there every day. It’s like an arrangement that only has positives.”