Stikine Inn manager Jake Harris stands in his kitchen, which is due for an overhaul this winter, along with three of the hotel’s guest rooms.
For Jake Harris and the Stikine Inn, his summertime business can be summed up in just one word.
“Awesome,” he said.
The hotel, restaurant and bar nestled on the waterfront of downtown have been in an all-speed-ahead mode since their kitchen’s summer fare began in earnest back in April. According to Harris, who has managed the facility since 2007, the arrival of a number of medium- to large-size cruise liners has also helped the bottom line.
“We’ve seen a steady increase since the economy tanked in 2008 and 2009,” Harris said. “Our revenue every year has increased since the property sold. At that time it was a full-year operation and not seasonal like we are now. We hit a plateau in 2010 and decided to make some changes. The cruises have helped a lot, also.”
The operation, under Harris, has a policy of making all capital improvements out of pocket rather than take on loans for upgrades or renovations.
“All the improvements over the last 3 or 4 years to the building have been done by us because we don’t want to incur debt,” he said. “We’re trying to progress the business without doing that and it’s been good because we’ve been focusing on what we have to accomplish first.”
Among some of the accomplishments Harris has achieved are changes to parts of the exterior, the kitchen, and overhauls of a number of guest rooms in the hotel.
“We started with the outside,” he added. “The rock wall, the foundation work, and the deck were things we’ve worked on that turned out great for us. The restaurant remodel came this year, and now our primary focus is to work on the hotel, which is year-round.”
The majority of the rooms have been remodeled with new carpets and updated – and Harris said he wants to finalize the remaining three rooms, which still need some work.
“We have the major details of three of the rooms that we have to completely gut and redo,” he added. “We’re going to go down to the studs on those three rooms. The rest are pretty much done.”
With the summer season quickly coming to an end, however, Harris said he has plans to renovate the kitchen in a very serious way.
“The work in the kitchen is going to be dramatic,” Harris stated emphatically. “It was never intended to do what it does now. The length of the line and the capacity of the storage are inadequate because we’ve added 100 seats since we bought the business in 2006.”
Harris added that by adding those 100 seats in the dining area he needs to triple his kitchen’s capacity and output.
“In doing that, you run into logistical problems with employees and storage and the fact you receive a shipment once a week, but you project your sales out to two weeks,” he added. “You’re basically guessing that way, who you’re selling to and if you don’t sell it, you sit on it. When you sit on it, you don’t have room for the new products. It’s been amazingly complex but we’ve managed so far.”
The renovation to the kitchen over the winter will involve a complete overhaul, according to Harris.
“Originally the kitchen was designed to serve for a café,” he added. “Where there are stand-up refrigerators there were sandwich and coffee booths and an ice cream shop. So we’re going to totally redo the line and storage areas. We’re going to gut it and make it more efficient and modeled for our current business levels.”
And Harris said he has a goal in mind when it comes to his redesign of the kitchen and seating areas.
“When I came here, my vision was to scale it up to fine dining because people that come to Wrangell are going to expect more amenities, like where they’re from,” he said. “Independent destination tourists typically have some money and they definitely want to feel comfortable. So, changing the atmosphere and food was the first thing we focused on because that costs so little money.”
According to Harris, the summer season for the Stikine dining room is tentatively set to close for winter during the month of October.
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