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Rosie’s Restaurant Owner Kevin Cummings Celebrates 20 Years

photo provided Kevin Cummings

Tuesday March 6, 2007

By Bridget Dorman

    Before owning Rosie’s, Kevin Cummings was a bus boy, a counter waiter, a bartender, a cook, and a manager at Howard Johnson’s Restaurant.  While Kevin has just entered his twentieth year of ownership at Rosie’s. it is Kevin’s opinion that it is the nearly 5,000 customers a week that own Rosie’s.  And after years of restaurant experience, he often boasts, “When I pass on, God will have one great dish washer!”  Kevin’s road to ownership started there, washing dishes, and his journey to Rosie’s started when he decided to take to the road as a salesman.

    After having his first daughter, Jennifer, the long hours at Howard Johnson’s restaurant began to monopolize his time and he decided to take a year off and work as a salesman, working for a food purveyor called Hershberg.  Kevin called on schools and restaurants throughout Stowe, the Sugarbush Valley and the Middlebury area, and during his years as a salesman he was able to meet much of the region’s restaurant community.

    The temptation to again commit to the restaurant life was ever present, and Kevin remembers the irony of his interest in a small Middlebury restaurant named “The Rose Bud.”  The restaurant was for sale, and the opportunity peaked his interest, but his professional career was fated to be linked to a restaurant of a different name.  It is evident now, that he was on the right path.

    After a year as a salesman, Kevin was convinced to return to the restaurant life when he was invited by his former boss, Bob Smith, to become the general manager of a Plattsburgh, New York “Ground Round,” several Howard Johnson’s restaurants and two other restaurant, hotel and banquet facilities; “The Crown and Feather” in Watertown, New York, and “The Surrey,” in Plattsburgh.  Five years after settling into his career, Kevin received a phone call from fellow restaurateur and now friend Robert Fuller, then a Chef at “Mr. Up’s” Restaurant.  Robert contacted Kevin about the potential sale of Rosie’s Restaurant from the present owner, Dutton Smith. It was 1985.

    After visiting the restaurant with wife, Marlene, a deal with Dutton was struck and a friendship forged.  Kevin and Marlene, and his two daughters became the family that again would allow Rosie’s to be called, a family owned business, with a family style feel.  

    Kevin remembers the feeling of warmth and welcome from community members such as Bud Palmer, who had previously owned Palmer’s Dairy Bar; the restaurant that would later become the sight of Rosie’s.  Steve James, of Monument Farms and Ed Foster, of Foster Motors extended their hand to Kevin, as well, making his introduction to the Middlebury business community a smooth transition.  Initiation was the job of the regular customers.

    Kevin and his family temporarily considered moving to the Middlebury area, but Kevin soon recognized the capabilities of Ron Sunderland and June Denis, two of Rosie’s most familiar and experienced employees.  He knew that this team would grant him the ability to ground himself in Underhill, Vermont, where he and Marlene had just finished building their dream home, an hour’s distance from the restaurant. Twenty years later, Ron and June joined in the celebration of Kevin’s twentieth year of ownership, and were recognized for their own thirty-six and twenty-six years of commitment to the restaurant.  Long time employees Chuck Porcheron, a Rosie’s cook, Steve Welsh, Rosie’s topnotch dishwasher and Carol Rule, the office manager have traveled much of the twenty year long road with Kevin as well.

     The Restaurant has continued to grow with the latest of many additions to the original dairy bar in the year, 2000.  The new addition made room for “The Great Room,” sufficiently sized to accommodate larger groups, meetings and parties and which hosts a large display of Vermont made quilts and a double-sided fireplace.  The new post and beam construction feels like Vermont, and although Kevin is a born and raised Buffalo Bills Football fan, he and his sentiments are twenty-five years deep into Green Mountain soil, and his love of country style shines through in Rosie’s menu and decor.  While food and family top his list of passions, Kevin also harbors a talent for wood craftsmanship.  Most of the wood ware in the restaurant was made by Kevin in his wood shop.

     While the restaurant has undergone some cosmetic changes, the atmosphere, food and service has stayed much the same over the past twenty, if not thirty years.  When local customers asked Kevin what he planned to do with the restaurant when he took over ownership back in 1986, he remembers saying, “I’m buying the restaurant because I like what I see.”  So, Rosie’s became Rosie’s, but with a touch of Kevin’s inspiration, dependent, of course, upon the suggestions, requests and demands of the customers.  The words, “Good food, plenty of it, and it don’t take all day to get it,” used to hang from the restaurant sign, with a smaller sign that read, “Usually,” hanging just below.  Kevin recently welcomed daughter, Bridget and son-in-law Chris Dorman, to his management staff to help maintain that remembered slogan.

   When you enter Rosie’s, you are welcomed by a sign that reads “Food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty and a break in the day for the weary traveler. We welcome you.”  Kevin and his staff at Rosie’s welcome you, hungry, thirsty, weary or otherwise to come to Rosie’s and enjoy what has taken twenty years to build, and moments to appreciate.

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