March 14, 2017

Meet David Bradley of The Original Pancake House in Alpharetta

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Bradley.

Thanks for sharing your story with us David. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Well, I personally have been in The Original Pancake business for over 20 years now, but I am a franchisee and my franchisor has been in the business since 1953. Not very much at all has change in the way we do things since 1953 and that is what makes us so unique. This is also what attracted me to the business. I come from a military background and the uniformity and consistency of The Original Pancake House seemed like a business that I would surely love. Plus all of the Bacon & Eggs I could eat! It’s paradise!

How I fell into the pancake business, in a nut shell: I am alumnus of The Virginia Military Institute. I was, of course, groomed to be a military officer, but VMI was a state funded school and Bill Clinton was taking office for the first time at the tail end of my cadetship and he cut the military down by two thirds. It became very hard for a lot of us to realize the commissions we had been groomed for.

The FBI came to my college and expressed an interest in all of us that were not going to end up as military officers. Several Special Agents gave a group of us that wanted to attend, a presentation on becoming a Special Agent for the Bureau. It seemed like a good alternative to military officer to me, so after the presentation I went to one of the Special Agents and I said “sign me up”. He said great, just go out and get two years of real world experience and then report to Quantico for training. This was hard for me to comprehend at the time after spending almost four years in an all-male military college. I thought perhaps it was some kind of test. So I asked him if he wanted me to be a police officer. He replied that, that was not necessary. I said; security officer of some sort? Again, he said any job will do. With my militant mentality, I just didn’t get it. I figured I better stay on a similar path and become a police officer or something similar.

Well being fresh out of school and 22 years old, I didn’t have much wherewithal and had a difficult time getting on board with the Virginia state troopers and even the local police department wanted me to go through a police academe for three month without pay. Which I did already have a bunch of bills, so while I was trying to figure it all out I took a job in a local restaurant as a prep cook.

My plan was for that to be temporary while I tried to stay on the FBI path. My problem at that point was that coming straight out of military college, I reported to work exactly right on time every day. I wore my combat boots and jumped into my prep work without hesitation or speaking. Even when some of the other prep cooks were screwing around and chatting, I would shake my knife at them and bark “HEY WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE DOING” “LOOK DOWN AND WORK!”

Needless to say I was promoted rapidly and was titled with kitchen manager in a very short period of time as I was learning all of the ins and outs of a restaurant kitchen and how to prepare all of the food. Within a few short months I was promoted to the front manager. The owner of the restaurant was a good boss and he taught me a lot. I drank it up like a sponge because my mother had always been a serious cook and I had always loved food and preparing it. I continued to get rapidly promoted and let the idea of becoming a Police officer go. In fact after being out there in the “real world” for two years it was time to report to Quantico. But at this point I was working for a large hotel chain where I was the restaurant manager in a 360 room hotel. I was responsible for a 120 seat breakfast, lunch and dinner restaurant, a lobby bar, 24 hour room service, and a 120 lounge with a DJ that was open until 2am. I had 5 supervisors that worked for me and I wore a suite and tie to work everyday. I really felt like I had gone too far and invested too much in my restaurant career at this point to drop that for the FBI. Maybe that was the original goal of those Special Agents that came to VMI. I don’t know, but I was a restaurant man from then on out, that was for sure.

Ah! So The Original Pancake House… Well, I sort of fell into the OPH as well. I wanted to move to Atlanta from Norther Virginia in 1995 and I knew a GM and a Food & Beverage director in two different hotels in the Atlanta area that were the same company as the hotel I worked at. All I had to do was transfer, but there was a monkey wrench thrown into my plan. The hotel I was working at got sold and me being middle level management, I was sold with the hotel. So needless to say, no transfers. I simply jumped ship, moved to Atlanta and then I had to wait out a 90 day period before I could reapply with my hotel company. I felt very confident that one of the two people I mentioned above would hire me in a heartbeat. I just had to get a job to hold me over. So I answered an ad in the paper for a restaurant manager in a new Original Pancake House that was about to open. I was hired and I loved the job! My boss actually lived in Birmingham Alabama. I had the challenge of opening a new restaurant, which I had never done, no boss breathing down my neck, daytime only hours, and again; all the bacon and eggs I could eat! I loved it! It was paradise! Once again when it was time to report to my old hotel company to get my “suite and tie” job back, I didn’t go. I stayed in The Original Pancake business and have been in it ever since. A few years after working for this gentleman that was the OPH franchisee, I was able to purchase that restaurant from him. 22 years has gone by and I have never looked back. It wasn’t all bowls of cherries and rainbows. I have certainly had my challenges over the years, but I can confidently say that I still have all of the bacon & eggs I can eat and it is paradise.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Smooth road? No! The location that I was in originally, went south. The demographic changed and was not conducive to an Original Pancake House.

I managed to move my business, with taking on a huge financial burden, ten years ago. I moved to my current location and it was the right location and perfect demographic for my business, but turned out I was moving right in the face of an imploding economy. I had no idea because I was so involved in my move that I did not realize the economy was crashing down around me. So I took on this huge financial burden of moving my business with building out a new space and I never finished paying off my debt from the purchase of my last location. I was in essence paying for two businesses at the same time. This was back in the beginning of 2007. I got my doors open in my new location and then watched 9 restaurants go out of business in my shopping center over the next two years while I was attempting to establish my clientele. You want to talk about broke? I was broke? I had to take tenants on in my own house, living with me, so I could pay my mortgage. And I still lost the house.

But I made it! 10 years later and I have a very valued clientele of many many regular customers that myself and my staff appreciate and strive to live up to the OPH standard for.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Original Pancake House – what should we know?
The Original Pancake House is extremely unique. We are full service breakfast, and that is not so unique anymore, but the product we serve is.

Here is how we differ from all of the other breakfast restaurants out there:
We squeeze juice everyday. That’s right. We never buy orange juice, only cases and cases of oranges.

We cook everything in clarified butter, that we clarify in house. Expensive but worth it!
We make all of our batters from scratch. I have people all of the time asking me if they can buy our pancake mix. There is no mix, just a recipe. Not only that, but a key ingredient to our recipe is a sour starter, that we make!

The list goes on and on.. From our own blend of coffee, served with real cream, to Hormel black label bacon. Everything we do is quality. The menu never changes, and that’s an Original Pancake House thing, but you get the same consistent, quality, healthy product with us every time, and it has been that way since 1953.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I have to give credit to my parents. They stood beside me and supported me through my deepest struggle when there were times I didn’t think I would make it. I have a beautiful 12 year old daughter that is the most amazing child with the largest most beautiful heart and my parents were there for her to help her build a snow man when her Dad was working 90 hours a week.

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