With his smiling face and handlebar moustache, Marv Garriott has become an icon in Black Diamond serving up burgers and ice cream while dressed in 1950s garb.
Yet, the owner of Marv’s Classic Soda Shop is finding it difficult to keep smiling.
Having overcome the struggles of losing business after the 2013 flood, the 69-nine-year-old is facing another challenge – securing adequate staff.
“I’m having so much trouble with staff this year for some reason,” he said. “I haven’t had a cook since October, so I’ve been doing seven days a week myself. I had Christmas day off and that was it.”
Exhausted from endless days of working, Garriott decided last month to put his popular ’50s vintage diner up for sale.
“There’s been a few days that I ran out of energy,” he said. “The day I decided to put it for sale is one of them.”
The diner operates seven days a week, but Garriott can only stay open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. due to the lack of staff.
The soda shop seems to be garnering interest from potential buyers since word got out he is selling.
“I’m speaking with two different couples right now and I’ve got a couple of realtors that have got people that are interested,” he said. “I don’t think it will go too long.”
Garriott refuses to sell to anyone who won’t maintain the diner’s vintage theme. This includes keeping the jukeboxes, authentic ’50s décor, antiques and Elvis appearances at the annual Marv’s Rock and Roll Classic.
“If somebody doesn’t want to keep going in the same line I just won’t sell it to them,” he said. “If it takes another five years that’s the way it goes. I’m not in a panic to sell it.”
Garriott is not sugar-coating what potential buyers will be getting themselves into.
“I told anybody that’s been interested in it if they are looking for a ride down Easy Street it’s certainly not going to be it,” he said. “You have to know everything that’s going on and you have to be able to take over when people don’t show up.”
Garriott will have owned the business for 16 years next month. He opened it as an antique shop.
“It was as derelict condemned building when we got it,” he said, adding it had previously served as a movie theatre and community hall. “I had to borrow money to get my rent paid for the first and last month to get in here.”
Garriott was in the antique and auction business and had enough items collected to open the doors while renting out 10-foot stalls to allow others to sell their antiques.
It wasn’t long before he brought in popular ’50s candy, ice cream and then expanded to serve hot dogs, French fries and hamburgers.
“We started off cooking on just a small plastic grill from home hardware and a little deep fryer,” he said. “We put out a lot of food on those things.”
Garriott then purchased a larger deep fryer and a commercial grill and soon had a $42,000 kitchen built.
Business was going great for Marv’s Classic Soda Shop until the 2013 flood washed out roads and the nearby campground that brought in many of Garriott’s summer customers.
“We lost pretty much the whole summer and the next summer as well because the campground was gone,” he said. “The campground is probably 35 per cent of the summer ice cream business. For the last two years it’s only been half open.”
Now that the campground is in full operation and with the Canadian dollar keeping many travellers in Canada, Garriott expects a fruitful season — finally.
“There’s been a lot of trials and tribulations,” he said. “I put a lot into the place. I got into a pretty big credit card debt.”
Once Marv’s Classic Soda Shop is sold, Garriott envisions a retirement of spending time with his grandchildren, playing more gigs with his band Country Just-Us and driving around in his pink 1960 International Harvester Metro selling his Marvello carbonated ice cream.
