Festival season has arrived, which means Steve Sazama’s nickname -- not to mention his pork sandwiches, cheese curds, mozzarella marina and sour cream and chive fries -- will be on the lips of thousands of Milwaukeeans for the next several months.
For 30 years, the outgoing Sazama -- known to friends and festival-goers simply as "Saz" -- has operated Saz’s State House, a popular rib restaurant located at 5539 W. State St.
His food is available at Summerfest, the Wisconsin State Fair, numerous other festivals, at your corner grocery store and soon through his Web site www.sazs.com. How did a former bartender / copy machine salesman build an empire out of ribs and mozzarella sticks? That’s what we wanted to know when we had Saz sit down at a booth in his restaurant for a Milwaukee Talks interview.
OnMilwaukee.com: You are celebrating your 30th anniversary this year. Some restaurants don’t last 30 days. Could you have envisioned 30 years ago that you would be where you are today?
Steve "Saz" Sazama: It’s been a good ride. We knew we had the right-sized place. It wasn’t much of a nut to crack. It’s just been an unbelievable ride, what this place has led to.
OMC: When you first opened, weren’t you more of a bar first and a restaurant second?
Saz: That’s right. The reason we’re in the restaurant business is that the city was cracking down on the number of people you could have in the restaurant. That’s why I built my first addition back in 1979. Back then, interest rates were about 18 percent. I almost went out of business because of that. I did (the addition) for more capacity, and I had to get in the food business. I was thinking "This whiskey stuff isn’t going to last forever." When we started out, I used to be 30 percent food and 70 percent bar. Now, we’re just about the opposite. In fact, it might be 75 percent food and 25 percent bar. I think when you concentrate on food, you have a lot more headaches but you also have more longevity.
OMC: One of the more interesting parts of your success is that thousands of people who have eaten your food at Summerfest, church festivals or from the grocery store have never been in the restaurant. Some people might not even be aware that you have a restaurant. How did that part of the business evolve?
Saz: One of my original customers’ nieces was Tracy Spoerl, who was the food and beverage manager at Summerfest. She introduced me to some people from Miller, and that’s pretty much how we got into Summerfest.
It just grew from there. The mozzarella marinara came out. We didn’t know what we were going to serve at Summerfest, and I had an idea that you needed something you could eat with your fingers, because you’d have a beer in one hand and eat it with your other hand.
I thought if we could do a pan-fried mozzarella marinara that you could eat with your fingers, we would have a winner. One night, my chef went out drinking with a Chinese chef and they’re talking about it and the Chinese chef said, "Cheese egg roll." That’s how it started.
OMC: A star was born, huh?
Saz: Yes. It was the mozzarella marinara. Tracy and I are still trying to figure it out. We were only in business three or four years at the restaurant at that time. We were selling them as fast as we could roll them. From that, we came up with some other lucky products.
OMC: Like what?
Saz: We were doing a rib thing at the first Winterfest, which they held on Wisconsin Avenue where the old Midland Bank was. Remember that place? They had the best-looking tellers. They used to advertise that they had the best looking tellers. They did, too.
Anyway, they put a dome up there and we were doing ribs and we couldn’t sell them worth a damn. No one would buy them. There were limited places to sit down, so we pulled the meat off the bones and made a pork sandwich out of them. That’s how we came up with the pork sandwich. We literally pulled the ribs off the bone and put them in a bun. Now, we use a shoulder. I can’t tell you how many tons we go through. That’s how we came up with that.
OMC: Sounds like necessity was the mother of invention. Were there any other "lucky" breaks?
Saz: Well, one thing about our products is that we are gluten-free. I’m one of the last guys who uses real sugar in the sauce. Now, about one out of every 135 Americans have some form of wheat intolerance. You see in some grocery stores, they have gluten-free sections. Even some waffle house I saw now has some breakfast stuff that is gluten free. The pork and chicken we use are also gluten free, along with the sauce. We didn’t plan on doing that, but it turns out the vinegar in our barbecue sauce doesn’t have wheat in it. That was a lucky break.
The last lucky product we came up with was the sour cream and chive French fry. That happened because of the health department. We were making our chips with fresh potatoes, so we always had a lot of water on the floor of the kitchen. We had to rinse these fresh potatoes with our oxidant. Water got all over the floor. For safety reasons, the health inspector said, "Can you possibly come up with a frozen French fry?" I said, "My customers are used to my homemade chips. I can’t give them a commercial French fry."
I had to do something, so I started looking into it and that was the year that one of the companies came up with their sour cream and chive French fries. Now, we go through four semi-trailers full in a summer.
OMC: A lot of people say that the first thing they do when they walk through the Summerfest gate is head to Saz’s for mozzarella or a combo plate. Now that you have a new area (near the remodeled Miller Oasis) your business will probably increase, right?
Saz: People are creatures of habit. It’s amazing. To think that last year, the combo plate alone, we sold 35,000 of that. But, you know, it’s more than just numbers. It’s all the fun behind each plate. You look out and normally it’s a guy and a girl, spending time together and eating the food. It’s nice to be a part of that.
OMC: Did the connection with Summerfest act as a springboard to other festivals?
Saz: Yes. After that, we got into State Fair. Everything just started snowballing from there. A good friend of mine had a trailer, so we let him use our products to sell at some festivals. That got us some exposure. The festivals ran in with the old ballpark and the Brewers being hot, then they kicked it up and they wanted the catering part of it. That’s how that part started. We’ve been full-time with (the catering business) for 12 or 13 years.
OMC: Does it strike you that thousands of people who have eaten your food at festivals or catered events have never been in the restaurant?
Saz: I laugh about the whole thing. Somebody gave me a rib recipe and the other things kind of came up.
OMC: Do you think it would be possible, in this era of mega-chains like T.G.I. Friday’s and Cheesecake Factory and other places like that, for somebody to start a restaurant today and replicate the success you’ve had?
Saz: Yeah, I do. It’s still America. These guys come up with their concepts and they can make it work. I look at it this way -- people are going out to eat more than ever before. Look at Applebee’s, they’re probably doing 15 percent of their business in carry-outs. People just don’t cook at home any more. Even though you’re at a small place, it gives you an opportunity with your carry-out food. Obviously, we don’t have the capital behind us like these chains have, but I think there are guys who can do it. There are some exciting places opening up in town, like in the Third Ward. Some of those guys will grow.
OMC: Location is such a key part of a restaurant’s success. You’re tucked away under the freeway here and next to the railroad tracks in a kind of out-of-the-way location. Did you ever think about moving or even getting rid of the restaurant to focus on festivals and catering?
Saz: Not really. This (restaurant) is still the mother lode. It all evolves from this. You have to remember that we’ve had some failures, too. We had the Depot restaurant in Waukesha, which never made money. We never lost money, but we never made money. We had the Longhorn Ranch out in Lake Geneva, which was a great place. We had it for four months and ran it into the ground. We had rodeos out there. We really had some neat stuff, but it didn’t work.
We had a location at the Grand Avenue mall, but that didn’t really work out. We were there for 15 years.
OMC: How did you get into the bar/restaurant business in the first place?
Saz: I started out as a bartender. I worked for Jerry Cohen at Major Goolsby’s and worked for Pep Palmer. He and I are grade school buddies. I learned a lot working for him.
I was actually selling copy machines for 3M, and Pep opened his place in Wauwatosa in 1970 or ’71. I was working with him, and I learned a lot, and then Jerry Cohen and Tom Shepard called me because they were opening Major Goolsby’s and they wanted me to work there. We were open almost a year before it was Major Goolsby’s. We were listed in the phone book under "The Bar with No Name." I think Jerry wanted to call it "East of Mecca," but that didn’t happen.
I also worked at Morry’s on Prospect. Jerry and Morry and Pep were all good friends. They just told me, "Keep your nose clean and work hard." It sounds so basic, but it’s true.
OMC: How has the bar business changed in 35 years?
Saz: It’s funny. Morry used to give us $50 in the drawer, with no 10s and no 20s. Now, on a Saturday night, the kids would come in and try to cash checks. We had to do it. We ended sometimes with $10 in cash in the drawer and the rest was checks. That was before TYME (ATM) machines and all that.
It’s funny, because pricing used to be a bigger deal back then. If you sold a beer and somebody down the street was selling it for 25 cents less, people would go to the other place. Now, kids come in and they don’t think about that. They have credit cards and they’ll buy martinis and Jaeger bombs and they don’t care how much things cost.
I’m 60 years old now. When I first started, I had rail vodka and Smirnoff. Now, I have over a dozen vodkas and I should probably have 20 of them. How many rums did you have back then? We had Bacardi and we had rail rum. Now, you’ve got all the flavors of rums. Now, it’s almost like if you say that you have a rail (liquor), people look at you funny. It’s almost like they think if it’s not expensive, it can’t be any good.
OMC: How have you changed in the time you’ve been in the business?
Saz: After I was in business for a few years, I thought I was bulletproof. I started thinking pretty grandiose thoughts and finding things wrong with everybody else and what they were doing. I remember at that time a lady friend of mine sat me down and said, "You’ve got to stop taking things so seriously. If you don’t, it’s time to call it quits." That really hit me. I decided it was time to step back a little bit. You have to enjoy yourself. If you’re not enjoying what you do at work, it seeps into other parts of your life. You can’t let it beat you up.
OMC: Are you enjoying what you do?
Saz: I still have fun. It’s still exciting. One of the best things is that I’ve got so many key employees who have been with me 10, 12 or 15 years. They’re like family. That makes it really special. You can’t grow by yourself. You’ve got to have the people behind you. I don’t have all the formulas. That’s why I’m not the Cheesecake Factory or a place like that. We can try different things. I’ve been so fortunate in that regard.
There is always going to be a high turnover in this business, but you see that the strong survive. We had our 30th anniversary and I’m just as proud of that as the fact that we have products available in the grocery store.
OMC: What is your business philosophy in a nutshell? What is your mission statement?
Saz: I think I missed that class in college (laughs). I think it’s about service. I always say it doesn’t take a genius to put ice in the glass, but it takes a good person to get the drink out. I tell my employees that there are 1,200 bars in Milwaukee. People can go anywhere they want. We’ve got to give them a reason why they want to come here. It’s all about service. You have to be as good as you can. It’s the same thing with food. You have to try to buy best quality food we can buy and give the best service you can.
The other thing is that I try to make it so anybody can come in here. You can come dressed in a suit for a business meeting or you can be in blue jeans. I want people to be comfortable. If you make them feel comfortable and you give them good service, they’ll keep coming back.
For 30 years, the outgoing Sazama -- known to friends and festival-goers simply as "Saz" -- has operated Saz’s State House, a popular rib restaurant located at 5539 W. State St.
His food is available at Summerfest, the Wisconsin State Fair, numerous other festivals, at your corner grocery store and soon through his Web site www.sazs.com. How did a former bartender / copy machine salesman build an empire out of ribs and mozzarella sticks? That’s what we wanted to know when we had Saz sit down at a booth in his restaurant for a Milwaukee Talks interview.
OnMilwaukee.com: You are celebrating your 30th anniversary this year. Some restaurants don’t last 30 days. Could you have envisioned 30 years ago that you would be where you are today?
Steve "Saz" Sazama: It’s been a good ride. We knew we had the right-sized place. It wasn’t much of a nut to crack. It’s just been an unbelievable ride, what this place has led to.
OMC: When you first opened, weren’t you more of a bar first and a restaurant second?
Saz: That’s right. The reason we’re in the restaurant business is that the city was cracking down on the number of people you could have in the restaurant. That’s why I built my first addition back in 1979. Back then, interest rates were about 18 percent. I almost went out of business because of that. I did (the addition) for more capacity, and I had to get in the food business. I was thinking "This whiskey stuff isn’t going to last forever." When we started out, I used to be 30 percent food and 70 percent bar. Now, we’re just about the opposite. In fact, it might be 75 percent food and 25 percent bar. I think when you concentrate on food, you have a lot more headaches but you also have more longevity.
OMC: One of the more interesting parts of your success is that thousands of people who have eaten your food at Summerfest, church festivals or from the grocery store have never been in the restaurant. Some people might not even be aware that you have a restaurant. How did that part of the business evolve?
Saz: One of my original customers’ nieces was Tracy Spoerl, who was the food and beverage manager at Summerfest. She introduced me to some people from Miller, and that’s pretty much how we got into Summerfest.
It just grew from there. The mozzarella marinara came out. We didn’t know what we were going to serve at Summerfest, and I had an idea that you needed something you could eat with your fingers, because you’d have a beer in one hand and eat it with your other hand.
I thought if we could do a pan-fried mozzarella marinara that you could eat with your fingers, we would have a winner. One night, my chef went out drinking with a Chinese chef and they’re talking about it and the Chinese chef said, "Cheese egg roll." That’s how it started.
OMC: A star was born, huh?
Saz: Yes. It was the mozzarella marinara. Tracy and I are still trying to figure it out. We were only in business three or four years at the restaurant at that time. We were selling them as fast as we could roll them. From that, we came up with some other lucky products.
OMC: Like what?
Saz: We were doing a rib thing at the first Winterfest, which they held on Wisconsin Avenue where the old Midland Bank was. Remember that place? They had the best-looking tellers. They used to advertise that they had the best looking tellers. They did, too.
Anyway, they put a dome up there and we were doing ribs and we couldn’t sell them worth a damn. No one would buy them. There were limited places to sit down, so we pulled the meat off the bones and made a pork sandwich out of them. That’s how we came up with the pork sandwich. We literally pulled the ribs off the bone and put them in a bun. Now, we use a shoulder. I can’t tell you how many tons we go through. That’s how we came up with that.
OMC: Sounds like necessity was the mother of invention. Were there any other "lucky" breaks?
Saz: Well, one thing about our products is that we are gluten-free. I’m one of the last guys who uses real sugar in the sauce. Now, about one out of every 135 Americans have some form of wheat intolerance. You see in some grocery stores, they have gluten-free sections. Even some waffle house I saw now has some breakfast stuff that is gluten free. The pork and chicken we use are also gluten free, along with the sauce. We didn’t plan on doing that, but it turns out the vinegar in our barbecue sauce doesn’t have wheat in it. That was a lucky break.
The last lucky product we came up with was the sour cream and chive French fry. That happened because of the health department. We were making our chips with fresh potatoes, so we always had a lot of water on the floor of the kitchen. We had to rinse these fresh potatoes with our oxidant. Water got all over the floor. For safety reasons, the health inspector said, "Can you possibly come up with a frozen French fry?" I said, "My customers are used to my homemade chips. I can’t give them a commercial French fry."
I had to do something, so I started looking into it and that was the year that one of the companies came up with their sour cream and chive French fries. Now, we go through four semi-trailers full in a summer.
Saz: People are creatures of habit. It’s amazing. To think that last year, the combo plate alone, we sold 35,000 of that. But, you know, it’s more than just numbers. It’s all the fun behind each plate. You look out and normally it’s a guy and a girl, spending time together and eating the food. It’s nice to be a part of that.
OMC: Did the connection with Summerfest act as a springboard to other festivals?
Saz: Yes. After that, we got into State Fair. Everything just started snowballing from there. A good friend of mine had a trailer, so we let him use our products to sell at some festivals. That got us some exposure. The festivals ran in with the old ballpark and the Brewers being hot, then they kicked it up and they wanted the catering part of it. That’s how that part started. We’ve been full-time with (the catering business) for 12 or 13 years.
OMC: Does it strike you that thousands of people who have eaten your food at festivals or catered events have never been in the restaurant?
Saz: I laugh about the whole thing. Somebody gave me a rib recipe and the other things kind of came up.
OMC: Do you think it would be possible, in this era of mega-chains like T.G.I. Friday’s and Cheesecake Factory and other places like that, for somebody to start a restaurant today and replicate the success you’ve had?
Saz: Yeah, I do. It’s still America. These guys come up with their concepts and they can make it work. I look at it this way -- people are going out to eat more than ever before. Look at Applebee’s, they’re probably doing 15 percent of their business in carry-outs. People just don’t cook at home any more. Even though you’re at a small place, it gives you an opportunity with your carry-out food. Obviously, we don’t have the capital behind us like these chains have, but I think there are guys who can do it. There are some exciting places opening up in town, like in the Third Ward. Some of those guys will grow.
OMC: Location is such a key part of a restaurant’s success. You’re tucked away under the freeway here and next to the railroad tracks in a kind of out-of-the-way location. Did you ever think about moving or even getting rid of the restaurant to focus on festivals and catering?
Saz: Not really. This (restaurant) is still the mother lode. It all evolves from this. You have to remember that we’ve had some failures, too. We had the Depot restaurant in Waukesha, which never made money. We never lost money, but we never made money. We had the Longhorn Ranch out in Lake Geneva, which was a great place. We had it for four months and ran it into the ground. We had rodeos out there. We really had some neat stuff, but it didn’t work.
We had a location at the Grand Avenue mall, but that didn’t really work out. We were there for 15 years.
OMC: How did you get into the bar/restaurant business in the first place?
Saz: I started out as a bartender. I worked for Jerry Cohen at Major Goolsby’s and worked for Pep Palmer. He and I are grade school buddies. I learned a lot working for him.
I was actually selling copy machines for 3M, and Pep opened his place in Wauwatosa in 1970 or ’71. I was working with him, and I learned a lot, and then Jerry Cohen and Tom Shepard called me because they were opening Major Goolsby’s and they wanted me to work there. We were open almost a year before it was Major Goolsby’s. We were listed in the phone book under "The Bar with No Name." I think Jerry wanted to call it "East of Mecca," but that didn’t happen.
I also worked at Morry’s on Prospect. Jerry and Morry and Pep were all good friends. They just told me, "Keep your nose clean and work hard." It sounds so basic, but it’s true.
OMC: How has the bar business changed in 35 years?
Saz: It’s funny. Morry used to give us $50 in the drawer, with no 10s and no 20s. Now, on a Saturday night, the kids would come in and try to cash checks. We had to do it. We ended sometimes with $10 in cash in the drawer and the rest was checks. That was before TYME (ATM) machines and all that.
It’s funny, because pricing used to be a bigger deal back then. If you sold a beer and somebody down the street was selling it for 25 cents less, people would go to the other place. Now, kids come in and they don’t think about that. They have credit cards and they’ll buy martinis and Jaeger bombs and they don’t care how much things cost.
I’m 60 years old now. When I first started, I had rail vodka and Smirnoff. Now, I have over a dozen vodkas and I should probably have 20 of them. How many rums did you have back then? We had Bacardi and we had rail rum. Now, you’ve got all the flavors of rums. Now, it’s almost like if you say that you have a rail (liquor), people look at you funny. It’s almost like they think if it’s not expensive, it can’t be any good.
OMC: How have you changed in the time you’ve been in the business?
Saz: After I was in business for a few years, I thought I was bulletproof. I started thinking pretty grandiose thoughts and finding things wrong with everybody else and what they were doing. I remember at that time a lady friend of mine sat me down and said, "You’ve got to stop taking things so seriously. If you don’t, it’s time to call it quits." That really hit me. I decided it was time to step back a little bit. You have to enjoy yourself. If you’re not enjoying what you do at work, it seeps into other parts of your life. You can’t let it beat you up.
OMC: Are you enjoying what you do?
Saz: I still have fun. It’s still exciting. One of the best things is that I’ve got so many key employees who have been with me 10, 12 or 15 years. They’re like family. That makes it really special. You can’t grow by yourself. You’ve got to have the people behind you. I don’t have all the formulas. That’s why I’m not the Cheesecake Factory or a place like that. We can try different things. I’ve been so fortunate in that regard.
There is always going to be a high turnover in this business, but you see that the strong survive. We had our 30th anniversary and I’m just as proud of that as the fact that we have products available in the grocery store.
OMC: What is your business philosophy in a nutshell? What is your mission statement?
Saz: I think I missed that class in college (laughs). I think it’s about service. I always say it doesn’t take a genius to put ice in the glass, but it takes a good person to get the drink out. I tell my employees that there are 1,200 bars in Milwaukee. People can go anywhere they want. We’ve got to give them a reason why they want to come here. It’s all about service. You have to be as good as you can. It’s the same thing with food. You have to try to buy best quality food we can buy and give the best service you can.
The other thing is that I try to make it so anybody can come in here. You can come dressed in a suit for a business meeting or you can be in blue jeans. I want people to be comfortable. If you make them feel comfortable and you give them good service, they’ll keep coming back.
Host of “The Drew Olson Show,” which airs 1-3 p.m. weekdays on The Big 902. Sidekick on “The Mike Heller Show,” airing weekdays on The Big 920 and a statewide network including stations in Madison, Appleton and Wausau. Co-author of Bill Schroeder’s “If These Walls Could Talk: Milwaukee Brewers” on Triumph Books. Co-host of “Big 12 Sports Saturday,” which airs Saturdays during football season on WISN-12. Former senior editor at OnMilwaukee.com. Former reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
