Wednesday, December 12 2012 09:26

Written by Denise Civiletti

Her voice may be faltering and she can't run around her restaurant the way she used to, making sure everything is up to snuff, but don't let that fool you.

The matriarch of the Wittmeier family, who built the Modern Snack Bar from a 16-seat roadside diner to a 125-seat icon of North Fork dining, is still very much in charge.

Wanda Wittmeier turns 90 today. She's lightened her schedule considerably in her golden years: she now works only six days a week, noon to 4 p.m.

The Aquebogue resident's landmark birthday was celebrated a couple days early by her extended family — which for Wittmeier includes Modern Snack Bar staff and longtime customers — with a birthday breakfast cooked by her sons John and Otto and a chocolate birthday cake.

She didn't want any parties, Otto Wittmeier said. And he seemed a little concerned that he might be in trouble with the boss for sneaking one in before the Snack Bar closed for the season, as it does each December. It served its last meal of 2012 on Sunday evening and will reopen the first Tuesday in April, 2013 — its 63rd year in business.

A dressmaker by trade, Wittmeier left her job at the Riverhead clothing store Bon Marche in 1952 to help her sister Lilly at the Snack Bar. Lilly had opened the Snack Bar with her husband in 1950 — the year the Wittmeiers moved to Long Island from Upper Falls, Mass.

Four years later, Wittmeier bought the business. It took some cajoling to persuade her husband John that buying the restaurant was the right thing to do. It was a huge risk. They gave their house as a down payment and got a bank loan to finance the rest of the purchase price. They moved into the apartment upstairs at the restaurant, where they lived for 32 years.

"We took this over without a dime," Wittmeier recalls. "If we lost it, my husband said, we'd be in the road. But I was determined to make it. I wasn't going to let it fail."

There are two reasons for the restaurant's success, she says. One was hard work, plain and simple. The Wittmeiers worked 16-hour days, seven days a week for years. They did it all themselves: cooking, baking, serving, cleaning, bookkeeping.

"We couldn't afford to hire people," she said.

The other reason is satisfying the customer. "You have to give them what they want: good food at a reasonable price."

That's what kept people coming back and grew the business, Wittmeier says.

The Modern Snack Bar as it stands today on Main Road in Aquebogue has grown up around the original structure in place when the Wittmeiers took over. It had six stools at a counter and two tables. They added the kitchen in 1957, the rear dining room in 1964 and the front dining room in 1975.

When the farm just north of the Snack Bar went up for sale, she wanted to buy it. Again she had some convincing to do. Her husband was reluctant.

"I told him, 'We've got to protect the Snack Bar,'" she recalls. There was a proposal being discussed for a low-income housing development for the farm. That could have been bad for business, she reasoned.

Wanda Wittmeier had a vision of her own for the site, and today it's an over-55 mobile home park. Like the restaurant, the park is spotless and tidy. It was the last mobile home park to get approval in Suffolk County, she says with pride. "I had to fight for it."

Her sons, who had moved away to pursue their careers, came home in 1989 to take over the business. Otto worked for Howard Johnson and Marriott, while John Jr. worked for the Ground Round.

"I'm so grateful they decided to come home to work here," she says. "It was getting to be a lot for me and my husband." But it was their decision, Wittmeier adds. "I couldn't ask them to come home. If they weren't happy, I'd be unhappy."

The Wittmeiers stayed on part-time "to help them out," she said. The boys promised they wouldn't change things, except on customer feedback. They've added some things to the menu over the years, she said, but they've been true to their word and true to the Snack Bar's reputation for serving up good, home-cooked meals. John Sr. passed away in 2001.

Wittmeier's daily post at the restaurant is a corner table in the front dining room, where she wraps silverware in paper dinner napkins, chats with customers, and generally keeps an eye on things.

"I never sit idle," she says, as her hands quickly and expertly wrap knife and fork inside a big white paper napkin, then secure the tight cylinder with a wax paper strip. "When I'm home, I knit, I sew, I read."

The restaurant that started out with a staff of six — maybe — including its owners, today employs about 30 people, she said. Former employees are frequent visitors, stopping in to say hello.

"For all the years she's been here, she knows them and remembers them all," Otto said.

The manager emeritus pauses in her work to bid an affectionate goodbye to a teary-eyed teenage waitress. She asks about the girl's college applications and whether she's heard from her top choice yet.

"I'll see you in April," Wittmeier tells her after a hug. "Be good."

Wittmeier's grandchildren have all worked at the restaurant during school vacations and on weekends, just as her sons did. They all learned the Wanda work ethic.

John's daughter, Claire, was waiting on tables Sunday afternoon. She was a full-time volunteer at a soup kitchen in Philadelphia for two years after college graduation. She recently returned to the North Fork and is hoping to pursue a teaching career. Claire laughs at a suggestion that she might be the third generation of Wittmeiers to run the Snack Bar.

"But you never know," she says, smiling at her grandmother.

"I always wanted to own a dress shop. I wound up owning a restaurant," her grandmother says, laughing. "You never know."

Her pride in her family and her satisfaction in life are obvious.

"God has been very good to me," Wittmeier said, clicking through the images on her digital camera, showing off her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"I'm so grateful for the many blessings I've had: my family, health, the strength to work hard... and for all the customers who love the Snack Bar," she added.

Tuesday, July 10 2012 00:00

Written by Tom Burke

Whether it’s a flat of tomato seedlings or 400 acres of potatoes, the Long Island Cauliflower Association in Riverhead has everything a grower needs for success. Fertilizer? They've got it by the truckload. Deer repellent? Gallon bottles are on the shelf. Grass seed specifically formulated for the East End?

“No problem,” said LICA CEO John Bokina Jr. He has enough inventory to handle the largest agricultural operations in metro New York or the smallest lawn on a downtown street, he says, and he’s looking for more business from both types of customers.

LICA past president Robbie Hartmann says the organization has reflected East End agricultural history since its founding in 1901. In the beginning, Hartmann said, the association only provided seed for North Fork cauliflower growers. Later the association arranged refrigerated railcar shipping via the LIRR.

By the 1940s LICA was sponsoring produce auctions for both cauliflower and strawberries plus providing seed, fertilizer, and even the wood and nails needed to construct cauliflower shipping crates. Machinery auctions, Miss Cauliflower pageants, and even the sale of the colored rubber bands growers used on their crops were once part of LICA's operation. (Cauliflower farmers use rubber bands to secure a few of the plant’s leaves over the top of the emerging “flower” to shade it from the sun, thus giving it its traditional “white-white” color.)

Today, cauliflower remains a significant North Fork crop and important to the association’s business, but there’s a lot more than cauliflower growing on the East End. There’s still potatoes, of course, plus sweet corn, and strawberries. But add to these farm stand staples hundreds of acres of nursery stock and ornamentals, sod, pumpkins, and wine grapes, and the LICA store begins to take on a more modern model as it services Suffolk, the number one agricultural county in New York.

While the association, a privately held stock corporation, is owned by farmers for the benefit of farmers, farmers aren’t its only customers.

LICA services 100 school districts, with thousands of acres of lawns and ball fields. The association markets the Louisville Slugger line of ball field materials, including pitchers’ mound/batters’ box clay, absorbent field driers, and field marking machines. They even contract with a special Louisville Slugger sales person to visit and advise potential customers about the product line.

Customers also include municipalities, water districts, and public works departments, Bokina said.

“We deliver fertilizer, lawn seed, de-icing materials and pest control systems to villages like East Rockaway and to customers in Montauk,” he said. “It’s all available through the LICA store.” Local farm stands can also buy everything they need, from baskets to bags, at the LICA store, Bokina added.

LICA's farm store, located at 139 Marcy Avenue, is something of a relic, Hartmann said. “It’s the last farm supply store on Long Island.” It’s doing well, he said, but only because management has changed with the times.

“We’ve become more diverse in our product line; we work with the Cornell University Cooperative Extension to stay current with the latest ag science; and we focus on service,” Bokina said.

“Our customers can’t wait for product; many can’t store material on the farm, so when they need it, we have to deliver,” he said.

“Gone are the days when the farmer’s wife would jump in the truck and drive over to pick up a bag of seed or barrel of nails,” Hartmann said.

“Today we have to be ready to deliver whatever the customer needs, when he needs it,” said Bokina, “whether by one of our seven delivery trucks or via UPS or FedEx.”

“Cash flow has become important, too,” Bokina added. "In the old days the farmer would pay once or twice a year. We’d advance him seed and fertilizer in the spring and wait till harvest for payment. Today, it’s all about cash flow. Farm finance is different now.”

In 2011, sales topped $9.4 million, up from $8.8 million in 2010, Bokina said. Ninety percent of the business, he said, is from commercial agriculture, the rest from homeowners. With three outside sales people plus the full range of modern communications techniques (yes, you can “like” LICA on Facebook) the association is aggressively seeking new business.

Photo caption: Yaphank farmer Bob Borella making a purchase at the L.I. Cauliflower Association store on Marcy Avenue Tuesday morning. Borella said he's the third generation of farmers in his family doing business with LICA.

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl ('Cauliflower Girl' photo courtesy of LICA)

Thursday, February 02 2012 06:24

Written by Brian Stark

What has hardwood floors, a stone fireplace, three large bedrooms, a full basement, and two car paver-stone driveway?

No, it’s not a custom home in Southampton Village. It’s what some of my friends still call a “trailer”. These tin cans, as Dave Wilmott used to call them, are now custom built structures that rival any stick built home on Long Island. It would be safe to say my factories can build whatever you desire, you just have to have the dough. 

To see these 60,000 lb. homes  barrel down the LIE at 60 miles per hour in the middle of the night is impressive. By the way, please don’t tell the cops they go that fast. To see them being craned onto a full basement is more impressive. And to see the reaction of the uninitiated home buyers walk into a model home in the new Glenwood Oaks is priceless.  But as in any business there is a story behind the story.

My father started bringing in trailers to Riverhead in 1959 at McCleods’ Mobile Home Park. When he and my uncle realized that this business was a pretty good gig they bought the land upon which Glenwood Village now sits and laid out the beginnings of what is now a 560 site community. The original homes had two small bedrooms with one bath, flat metal roofs and jalousie windows. The small recreation center was centrally located containing a kitchen, meeting room and library. As the sixties turned into the seventies trailers became mobile homes. Soon the enterprising brothers ran out of property and bought more to satisfy the demand from Long Island retirees flocking to the east end. Every year their builders would tweak the designs. The housing shows in Louisville and Harrisburg would push the envelope by offering more options for the end buyer. One box units soon became “double wides” and site built amenities grew.  Flat roofs became shingled roofs and metal gave way to vinyl siding. In the new areas the end elevation layouts became ranch style lots. The tiny recreation hall got bigger, and Glenwood Village soon had the latest and greatest floor plans from the biggest factory-built companies in the country. The evolution of the product was impressive, but there would be more.

In 2003 the contiguous property became available and Stark Homes purchased 35 more acres. In spite of the tiger salamanders, we were able to lay out 81 more building sites. This area, called Glenwood Oaks, would be a showcase for our new high-end homes. Four foot crawl spaces were now standard. Custom-built cabinets and tile floors were common. Steeply pitched, hinged roofs were installed to give the homes a residential look. The large crane came in 2004 to set the first home and hasn’t left. These “double-wide” mobiles are now manufactured homes. The dirt underneath now has eight-foot walled basements instead of cinderblocks. The jalousie windows are gone forever, replaced by thermo pane ones that in some cases span eight feet across.

The looks on customers’ faces tell the story. 

“I never knew these were so large,” is a common refrain.

“I can pick out my own floor plan?” Yes, you can.

“I can install solar power?" Yes. 

“You have a large swimming pool too?" It’s one of the largest around.

“The community offers 24 hour maintenance?"  Yes, again.

“But these are ...trailers, right?" For full disclosure, I say, they do come here on wheels.

The puzzlement sometimes persists. “But what do you call them?"

My reply: Why don’t you just call it a nice home?

I think Dad would be proud.

Friday, October 28 2011 08:48

Written by RiverheadLOCAL

Spaghetti, meatballs and Halloween fun at the Off Main Market on Osborn Avenue yesterday.

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl