PORKLAND, A HISTORY...
If you've been around Love City for any amount of time, you surely have heard about Porkland or eaten there. While we've told the story many times about how it started, not many people know the full impact that Porkland has had on our neighborhood, or even on us.
Following the general theme in our lives, we had no idea what we were doing when we started a small fish fry out of the back of the Mackin building when we moved here seven years ago. Amazingly though, over time, we've come to see how we had been unknowingly prepared by past experiences and life in general for just such an endeavor. Shawn and I met at business school at Bellarmine University, my background was government and his was culinary. When we moved to Portland neither of us had any experience with non-profits. We knew our calling was to love our neighbors, whatever that looked like. Necessity shoved us down the path that would eventually become Porkland.
Shortly after we moved into the house behind the Mackin building and opened the gym to neighborhood kids to have a safe place to hang out, we realized we needed to do something to raise money to keep the lights on. Neither of us were good at or particularly excited about fundraising by asking people for money, so we looked to generating income to keep
things afloat. We closed on the building on a Friday morning, that afternoon Shawn and I were sitting in the back cafe area wondering what had we just done, when there was a knock on the old back door. Shawn went to open it and it was one of our neighbors down 26th St. "Do you all have fish?," he asked. Shawn and I looked at each other a little perplexed, but then remembered a previous tenant of the building used to sell fried fish out the back to raise money. Shawn looked at our neighbor and said "come back next Friday, we'll have fish." And with that, the fish fry at the Mackin building was born.
It was October 2015 when the fish fry started. Every Friday Shawn would get up early, head out to Sam's club, and restaurant depot and pick up all the supplies for the day. At that time I was still working full time for Humana and going into the office, so I left when he did, but headed to my office for the day. A year earlier we had a friend who was moving cross country, the day they finished loading up the van we came to say goodbye. The van was loaded to the brim, and there was one last box that just wasn't going to fit. It was a table top fryer. He insisted that Shawn take it as the van was pulling out to hit the road. We had no use for a table top fryer, but we brought it with us when we moved into the house behind Mackin. That first Friday of the fish fry, Shawn pulled out the fryer from our basement and put it to work.
It was simple, just fried fish, bread, fries, tartar sauce and ketchup and canned drinks. We would cup the sauces the day before and pick up everything else on Friday mornings. That first Friday, Shawn worked the fish fry by himself until I came home from work at 5pm, then he and I finished out the day together at 8pm. We had 30 people show up over 8 hours that first day. Shawn was exhausted that night and
we were both wondering if this was a good idea. We knew consistency was important , so the next Friday, we built a wood easel sign, and I stencil painted the letters "FISH FRY OPEN 12-8" on both sides. That next Friday we had 50 people come to buy fish.
Over time, the word started to get out. Not only did we have more customers we had more help too. Volunteers would come every Friday to help run the fryers, cup ketchup, put together boxes. We had special Friday nights were we would set up tables in the gym and have some of our musician friends come to play music. As Love City grew so did the fish fry. We had interns that would
have the job every week of cleaning the "sludge," the layer of bread crumbs that would settle in the bottom of the fryers after hundreds of pieces of fish would be cooked throughout the day.
We had to add 12 more electrical outlets in the back of the kitchen to accommodate 6 table top fryers as we had outgrown the one we started with. We had so many appliances plugged in, we would routinely blow the main breaker in the building and have to make a mad dash to the basement to reset it so the lights
would come back on. The small bathroom fan that acted as a vent in the kitchen wall didn't really vent anything, your clothes still stood up on their own after a fish fry shift because of all the grease in the air. We replaced the small vent with a whole house fan that sucked all the heat in the winter and AC in the summer right out of the building. We added coleslaw and rolled oysters to the menu. By the end of 2017 we had over 400 people coming every Friday to buy fish.
At this point the fish fry had been going about a year and we knew we had pretty much reached capacity with our makeshift kitchen of table top fryers. We had started looking into converting the whole back snack bar area of the building into a commercial kitchen. The cost however was going to be enormous, almost double what we had paid for the building, so we hit pause and just waited.
While Portland is an old Irish catholic community, it's more culturally catholic than active members, so when the active members of the local catholic church starting showing up to our fish fry, we knew something was up. The Parish secretary and book keeper started coming regularly and then one Friday Father John Burke showed up at the fish fry. In addition to knowing almost everyone in the neighborhood, by that time a
majority of the customers at the fish fry were all locals, he also knew his fish. A couple weeks after he started coming to get fish, he called Shawn and asked for a meeting. We met with him one Friday morning over at the rectory on the grounds of the old St Cecilia church. "Well," he said as he leaned back in his swivel chair, "we've been watching what you all have been doing.... and we're very impressed with all you have done in the community. We'd like to invite you to put together a proposal to purchase St Cecilia." Shawn and I both about fell out of our chairs. St Cecilia wasn't just the church building, it was also the rectory that we were sitting in, out door garages, and the parish hall, which had a fully functioning commercial kitchen. "Father Burke," Shawn said, "we really appreciate you asking us, but Inga and I don't have any money, there is no way that we could afford this."
Father Burke leaned back in his swivel chair again, tilted his head back and closed his eyes and paused for a good minute. Leaning forward back over the table he said "Well....we do have it insured for about $700,000 and we've received an offer of $1M, but for you all.... I think we could do around $280,000." For the second time that morning, Shawn and I both about fell out of our chairs. In my head I had to stop the words "deal" from coming out of my mouth. I started reaching for my check book to write an earnest money check to seal the deal right then, even though I knew a check for that amount would clear. "Put together a proposal of what you would do with the space and have it to me by Sunday morning, our parish council meets Sunday afternoon and you all can come present your plans." Father Burke said. That meeting kicked off a 385 day process, I would say battle, to secure the funds, and close on St Cecilia.
We finally closed the deal over a year later at the end of August 2017. We closed on a Friday morning, and that evening, Father Burke and some members of the parish council showed up at the Mackin with a bottle of champagne to go with their fish from the fish fry. The next month, we moved the fish fry from the Mackin, over to the parish hall at St Cecilia, and thoughts started brewing of turning the fish fry into a restaurant.
The more we talked about turning the fish fry into a restaurant the more the pieces started to fall into place. We had a friend that was looking for a life change that had a BBQ catering business on the side with some killer recipes that was interested in helping launch and run a BBQ restaurant with us. We had another friend that knew the owner of a large restaurant equipment company that donated all the fryers, ovens, fridges, stovetops that we would need for a top notch restaurant kitchen. At that point we
had been running open gym for 2 years, and had some recent high school graduates were looking for jobs in the neighborhood. Everything came together and for about $1,500 for the neighborhood painters paint the old parish hall, Porkland was born March 28, 2018.
Opening day was the largest single day of sales ever at Porkland. We were selling fish and BBQ so fast we had a crew of volunteers cupping tartar sauce in the back store room and it was flying out as soon as it was cupped.
As time went on and the restaurant found its groove, people came and went but the core mission of Porkland as remained the same.
THE REGULARS...
Ms Ladonna (center) talking with neighbors in line at Porkland
Above all else Porkland is a community restaurant. When it started as a fish fry at the Mackin, one of the best things I saw when I worked the counter was neighbors that lived down the street from one another running into each other in line at the fish fry and reconnecting. Those early days of community have continued through to today. A large majority of our regulars not only still come in at least once a week, but they used to come to the Mackin for fish before Porkland existed. That's seven years of life with people.
People like Danny that lives across the street from Porkland on St Cecilia St. If you come into Porkland and see the Jesus picture wall, almost all of those pictures came from Danny. He likes to go to yard sales and comes in every Friday for his two chicken tacos and drops off some sort of print, book, card that has either a picture of Jesus or scripture on it. He and his wife moved to the small house at the end of St Cecilia street over 40 years ago, because his wife liked being able to see the stained glass windows of the church from her front porch across the street. His wife passed away a few years before we moved to the neighborhood and he can't bring himself to move. He started coming to the Mackin for fish almost from day one and has been coming every week since.
There is also Mike, who lives down 26th Street. He spent 30 years working for an auto parts company until he lost his job a few months ago. Now we see Mike every day. Porkland is his regular hang out, even if he just orders chips and salsa and a diet coke, he doesn't miss a day. People like Ms. Ladonna, who had a stroke a few years back and stopped coming while she was in recovery. She worked hard to get back to being able to do everyday life and is here every Friday to order fish for herself and her husband.
Regulars are not just locals to the neighborhood either. Early on when we started the fish fry, we started using the motto neighbors near and far. Our neighbors on the other side of town were also in integral part in helping make the fish fry and Porkland happen. Before the pandemic closed downtown offices we would see people like Todd who worked in advertising
who would come down and eat lunch with members of his office, or Gary who worked in financial planning who would bring clients for lunch.
And it's not just regulars that make up the group of neighbors that visit Porkland. Over time we noticed more people from out of town showing up to Porkland for lunch. They are easy to spot because they look a little perplexed as to how they got there and where they are. Through getting to know these new neighbors we noticed a trend. People either driving by on the interstate, or picking up a rental car and hitting the road from the airport, would google "bbq near me" and their GPS would take them to Porkland. The little neighborhood restaurant built on a fish fry that provides love, community and really great food.
THE RESTAURANT BUSINESS IS NOT EASY...
Even before the pandemic the restaurant business was not an easy business to be in. Turn over is notoriously high, the work can be stressful, and physically demanding. I would be lying if I said there weren't days that both Shawn and I were tired. Porkland has only turned a profit a few months of the almost three years we've been open. We've had 54 people come through as employees in that time, some have stayed for a few weeks, some stayed for a few years. We've had to deal with a pandemic, rising food costs and labor shortages. But every time we have turn over, or have to drop everything and help run the restaurant, we get to see once again why Porkland is so important.
Pictures from the top: Team members over the years at Porkland: Alexis serving a customer at the font counter; Kortney and Paiman on set at Great Day Live promoting Porkland; Paiman and Alice in the kitchen at Porkland; Sadiki taking pork butts off the smoker
Each one of the 54 employees that have come through Porkland have had different needs and gifts, some needed help staying sober, some needed help putting their lives back together after successfully completing rehab, some needed a job to get them started in life after graduating, some needed a side job after school to help support their families, some wanted to chase their dreams of running a restaurant, but all of them showed us the importance of putting love first and in the face of adversity the best thing to do is love more
A couple of Fridays ago, I had finished up at the school and went over to Porkland to see if I could help out. Shawn runs a well oiled machine at Porkland, but I still like to come hang out and help with little things here and there. I was in the back store room counting inventory for the week and couldn't help but hear multiple conversations happening in the dining room. The
store room walls don't go all the way to the ceiling so you can hear pretty much everything happening on the other side of the wall. I heard Ronnie come in and order his regular meal he orders every Friday, fish on rye, with tartar sauce, and fries. He chatted with Shawn for a minute and then went over to the other side of the dining room to shoot some pool while he waited for his order, like he does every Friday. I heard Shawn ask the two guys who were eating by the window when I came in where they were from. We both could tell they weren't from the neighborhood. They said they were from Michigan, they were driving by on 64 and googled BBQ and their GPS took them here. They were impressed with the food and even more impressed when Shawn explained more about Porkland and Love City. I heard Jeff from down the street come in to help cup sauces, work that he does in exchange for a meal most days. It was a snapshot into the life that Porkland has created in this community. People from near and far coming together with love over good food.
While the fish fry may have started out to create sustainability to help foster community in the gym, it became so much more than that. It created community in a unique way that helped bring a neighbors together. As we continue the journey with Porkland we hope that the community created continues to blossom and grow in beautiful ways bringing together neighbors near and far.
The cold weather is back and we've brought back our chili. You can grab a bowl or have it over fries with sour cream, and our home made pickled jalapeños.
2519 St Cecilia St
Monday - Thursday 11am - 2pm
Friday 11am - 7pm
www.porklandbbq.com
PARTNER WITH US
At Love City we believe in time, talent and treasure.
Mighty Oak Academy Amazon Wish List
We've started the new semester and our supplies of snacks and breakfast items are running low. You can find some on our Amazon wish list, but if you make a grocery run or Sam's club/Costco run and can pick up an extra box of any of the following we would appreciate it!
Granola bars
Yogurt cups or GoGurt
cereal
Veggie Straws
Goldfish/CheezIts
If you would like to partner with the school, you can visit our Amazon wish list and purchase items to ship directly to the school. Visit this link to view the list: https://a.co/77dqBIT
If you are interested in volunteering or to find out more information about supplies needed please email: info@lovecityinc.org or call (502) 272-078.
Please consider partnering financially with Love City. We are looking for sponsors for students at Mighty Oak Academy as well as partners to help fund construction of our new preschool. Click the button below to donate today.