UMBRELLA HOSPITALITY GROUP’S AUSTIN MELROSE AND ZACHARY PATTERSON ON WORKING WITH PASSION AND SUCCESFULLY NAVIGATING THE UNSTABLE WATERS OF THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY IRVIN RIVERA
Here’s a quite lengthy but very insightful and inspiring sit-down interview with the founders of Umbrella Hospitality group Austin Melrose and Zachary Patterson.
They currently have 3 operational locations – Melrose Umbrella Co. (Melrose Ave), Corner Door (Culver City), and Lono Hollywood (Right off Hollywood Blvd.) Their fourth baby, the upcoming Umbrella Taco, (right beside Melrose Umbrella Co. along Melrose Avenue.)
What’s really great and inspiring about these guys is their passion. There’s genuine love, and intent in everything that these guys do and it is evident in everything they touch. From each of their locations, to their cocktails, down to their menu, is a clear point of view and a solid story.
In this exclusive interview, the pair shared with us the ups and downs of establishing and running a successful hospitality business, the rich history of each location and cocktail drinks they serve, and their dynamics as friends and partners running the business together.
Tell us a little bit about your story and your background as well as Melrose Umbrella Co.
AUSTIN MELROSE: My name is Austin. Zack and I grew up in Central Oregon together. We started in hospitality when we were 15/16-years old at country clubs. We started as cart boys and caddies and then when the weather would shift, they would bring us into the restaurant. So we were dishwashers and busboys and that's kind of how it all began. We went off to school and both ended up in Los Angeles- bartending and running a couple of venues and then decided to open our own location which is where we're sitting right now, almost six years ago, and then expanded to open two more after that.
What's the idea behind the company Melrose Umbrella Co?
ZACHARY PATTERSON: How long do you have? That's actually a really fun one. The umbrella is a symbol that stood for post-Prohibition. So in New York, especially shop owners in New York when prohibition ended, people would put the logo of the umbrella with rainfall falling from the inside of their window. That logo of the umbrella stood and meant for many wet days to come.
So, when people saw that, they knew they can go in and get hooch and get booze inside. Since we’re on Melrose, one of the most famous roads in the world and for the most part, everyone knows Melrose, we want to give it a little nod. We're on Melrose, we are The Umbrella Company and we stand for those many wet days to come. We celebrate that and we celebrate it in everything we do, that's very short version of that story.
You encapsulated it well. What inspired you both to establish the business in Los Angeles, why LA?ZACHARY: It is the most difficult city in the world
AUSTIN: Yeah, right? it is good for the top and if it works, this is a further fall to the gap. (laughs) We both ended up in LA for different reasons and we were working at places where we got “no” a lot.
We were doing our own things off-site on our own. We do cocktail catering or hosting events and parties and whatnot. So one day we looked at each other and we're like, “How hard could it be to open our own spot?” And as I always say, it turns out it was really effing hard. But we were young enough at the time and didn't have pets or kids or spouses so we just kept going with it. Now we've got three big babies which is Melrose Umbrella Co., Lono Hollywood, and The Corner Door out in Culver City.
How did how did you manage to establish all this?
ZACHARY: It was one of those things where Austin and I both were working for other people in this industry. As much as I'm going to say we don't do everything right, there were a lot of things that we were noticing from the people that we worked for that were done incorrectly.
A lot of it is just about the passion, the care and the support of the community and really creating a place where everyone feels comfortable and homey.
We saw a lot of them. We're in LA so of course you see a lot of bouncers at the door, what you’re wearing, what do you look like, who do you know; and we're from a small town in Bend, Oregon and that is something that goes against the grain of everything that we were raised on.
When we looked at what we had seen, we put our heads together and we were like, Look, like what Austin just said, how hard could it be? We can do this. We can see where they're failing, especially those key points to us, and let's see what we can do.
So, we decided we were going to do it. Once we decided, that was the only option. We found a place, we found a space. This looked nothing like this. (refers to Melrose Umbrella location)
As they say, location is everything, right? We spent a long time trying to find a location that we wanted to spend all of our days at and because when you open something you create a baby, and that's your home. You lived there. We want to find a place that we really wanted to call home and Melrose is an awesome, awesome, street. It's super cool, it's super eclectic with tons of independent businesses.
Now there's a lot of walking traffic. There wasn't but we heard about how it was like in the 80s and early 90s, when it was “Melrose Place.” It was the jamming spot. We heard and we felt that resurgence was coming back. Luckily enough, and fortunate for us, it has. And so that’s what we did.
Austin, and a friend of his, Matt Winter, jumped in and started designing this whole place and creating what we wanted it to be. The three elements we stuck with was worldly, apothecary- all things cocktail culture and culture in general, and it had to feel like home.
So, Austin and Matt went to town and created a place that's worldly, apothecary and feels like home.
AUSTIN MELROSE AND ZACHARY PATTERSON IN MELROSE UMBRELLA CO
How long did it take for you to do this?
ZACHARY: Three days (laughs)
AUSTIN: That’s good.
AUSTIN: I'll say Umbrella and Lono took about ten-eleven months to get it done. Neither spot was a cookie cutter.
And as what Zach was saying, with location, being a part of the revitalization of Melrose Avenue, of Hollywood Boulevard and same thing with Culver City, there's a lot of expansion going on and development stuff out there
ZACHARY: The process of getting it designed and made was fun for me because my skill sets don't necessary lie where Austin's do.
For instance, when him and Matt were doing a lot of design and other elements that they were doing, there was a lot of times when I would walk in and I would see something already basically put together. It looked like it was maybe not permanently affixed but structurally ready and they'd both be sitting there staring at it and be like, “It looks great… but, no I think we're going to take it down,” “we don't like it,” “now it doesn't fit with this, yeah we got to start over.”
It was a continuous process of early, early, mornings, sunrise to sunset of them bringing bricks in, bringing bricks out, putting logs in, taking them out, creating things. Literally the bar top was laid in cement. They dumped cement to reinforce the bar top. They had a woodworking team of carpenters coming in, shaving wood pieces to hit the exact shape they wanted to match the pew that we had shipped in. Almost everything in here, almost 95% was all made before World War II.
So, there’s a lot of reused and reclaimed things, refurbished in a way that fits what we're trying to do. We didn't need a building that was built in 1936. Once we demoed everything, which was a fun process of its own, Austin and I thought we could do that in a couple hours, but turns out after couple hours we were tired of sledgehammers and hired an entire crew that took three days.
AUSTIN: It’s like exactly what we imagined. It was like, you know we got the keys man, let's go get sledgehammers and turn on Limp Bizkit and just break everything. We got one wall done and we looked at each other we're like at this rate we'll be we'll be open in a decade because it's not the fastest process but it was a lot of fun.
Also, you know there's 13-umbrellas inside. The Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933, so there's 13-umbrellas on the wall for each dry year the US had to endure during that unfortunate time.
13 umbrellas on the wall. That’s really cool. Where is it located at?
AUSTIN: When you walk in, on the left side, up top.
It is fun fact
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah.
Now let’s talk about the cocktail mixes. For you guys, what do you think so far is the best one that you’ve created so far?
ZACHARY: Oh man!
AUSTIN: That's a tough one.
Throughout the years, which one is the best so far?
AUSTIN: They're all fun. They're all fun, funky and different. When we opened, we didn't even put a vodka cocktail on the menu because we wanted people to experience some different spirits and things that they hadn't been kind of properly introduced to. All of them are fun. They're like players on a team. They're all on the roster. They're all fun and funky and we leave some of them on there. When we first opened, we released it in certain volumes. And so there's throwbacks that are like kind of the top sellers from each volume that we've kept on the menu indefinitely.
What's your favorite?
ZACHARY: I don't…
Or memorable one
ZACHARY: Ok, memorable is great. We've had a couple memorable ones. Marcus Fan put us in LA Magazine, as the number one drink of the summer. That was the Melon prosciutto cocktail we did, remember that? (asks Austin)
AUSTIN: Yeah that was a great one
ZACHARY: And then actually one of our most, I guess, well-known drinks is a Romance Without Pressure [described as a romance as sweet as a passion fruit gone as sour as a grape fruit with a subtle twist of cucumber and the freedom to choose gin, vodka, rye or pisco]
It’s pretty straightforward. We've combined passion fruit lemon and grapefruit together in a balance. And that blend we make works with every single spirit. And it's something that all of our bartenders love. Turns out it works great with some rye whiskey in the form of a Jackaroo which is an old 1800’s cocktail.
So, that one gets a lot of play just because it's so versatile. Again who doesn't love passion fruit? We just found a way to balance it and highlight it a little more.
We like flaming mushrooms, so we love infusing spirits with mushrooms. Turns out when you smoke a cocktail that's already infused in mushroom you get a wild beautiful, earthy, robust like rich, rich, flavor in it so that's a fun way of another mushroom infused cocktail right now a little coconut mastic chocolate bitters are just fun.
AUSTIN: We did a riff on a Tom Kha soup. It’s a vodka-based cocktail. It's like a fun lemongrass. We'll have to have you try one. It’s nice and creamy. We named it the SUM YUN GAI, from Wayne's World, which is funny when people don't know the reference and are shouting that over people, ordering it, it's a good one. Try that one
Awesome!
ZACHARY: Now I will say this as far as creative and memorable, Austin and I, with every concept we've opened, and sometimes when we do really unique menus, we'll go and we'll travel to a place that inspires us for that. We really like to go and find the origins of those cocktails.
It doesn’t have to be the exact cocktail. Like for example, before we opened up LONO we went to where the Daiquiri was created. We went to Cuba and it’s totally worth it. We had to go to the home of the Daiquiris and saw holy trinity for tiki bars and tiki drinks. We went to Cuba so we could see where it came from to where it is now and then put our little twist and spin on it.
We travel often. We're going to Guatemala in a few, and we’re going to Puerto Rico in three days.
We're doing Piña Colada created in Puerto Rico. I feel like we make a better one. I'll say it on record. Our Piña Colada in LONO is delicious but we got a little secret ingredient and I'm not going to tell you what it is but it was a game-changer.
It’s really cool that go to these places and actually put a lot of thought into whatever you’re creating.
AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah.
ZACHARY: That's what a lot of this is. A lot of cocktails and a lot of brands are stories that people can relate to. And we live our lives to tell our stories and everything has a good story. Who doesn't enjoy telling a good story? If we can bring that element and everything we do then we're going to.
So, how is business partnership like between the two of you?
ZACHARY: Have you ever seen this sitcom Friends? I don’t want to say it’s soap opera because it's not as dramatic. Austin and I grew up together and I've known him since he was 10-years old. We grew up in the same small town so we are at the end of the day, family. And with family, there's the good times and the other times and we've had them all and we get through them all. At the end of the day we’re family; we'll get through it in the tough times because you know most people out there know a partnership is a marriage. And marriages aren't easy to take work. But that aside, I will say we are very much skiing on much better times than bad times and I had a lot of fun doing it.
AUSTIN: Yeah, and with any kind of partnership, there's a lot of trust involved obviously. And that's something we got really lucky with to build a foundation on. It's definitely not easy but you got to have a couple of key things to build on. Otherwise it's like anything- when the foundation is wonky, everything's going to tumble down at some point. So we got we got lucky with that out of the gates for sure
ZACHARY: You know we’re young enough, dumb enough and just having so much fun that we didn't realize how far we had come for a long time, and still don't in a lot of ways. To us, it's still one foot in front of the other every day. We're still trying to improve and do something different and open something else. Always fallen behind but trying to get ahead.
It was pretty wild sometimes when we step back and look at Umbrella because it's something that we didn't realize we had built. We were building it and we were just really living in that moment, creating it.
So, that's a telltale for what we do and we're together and we're in the room the energy is there. We have so much fun that it doesn't feel like work which is the goal, right?
Will you guys open a business, that is not in LA or in any other city?
ZACHARY: Yes 100% LA is the worst city. (laughs)
AUSTIN: Absolutely. One thing that Zack was saying with choosing location, we don't just go in. We didn't go into any of the spots and just drop a concept in and was like “this is going to work.”
Advice on that one, I guess, if you are going to go open something, know the neighborhood, know that it's something you want to be a part of. It takes a community to keep the business running because you have to have customers. It's not just you and all your friends, it's got to be appealing to everyone and you've got to know the clientele and the market that you're dealing with and you offer things to people that they care about.
ZACHARY: This year we've had a lot of opportunities and offers to open up in other places but we haven't done it yet because we really want to get flagship in the homebase settled. This year we're actually looking at potentially expanding either some of our existing brands or doing some new things that we have up our sleeve in different cities. So, not to say we're going to pull the trigger in those but we're actively thinking about it, yes.
If you guys are not thinking of business, what else keeps you busy?
AUSTIN: Man, these are good questions. I mean, this is what we do a lot. We're at one of the venues every day
ZACHARY: All of them.
AUSTIN: Yeah and multiple times. It's definitely one of those things that you can't clock the hours; Whether it's in this industry or just like any entrepreneur stuff in general, you can't just clock the hours. You can't wake up and be like “I'm going to work from 9 in the morning until 5 and I'm going to drive home and then I got the weekends off.”
It's got to be something that keeps you going; to where you look around and you don't notice that you've worked 14/16-hours until you've hit it, and you're like I feel kind of tired. Or oh yeah I started like really early this morning and it's really late at night. Yeah we do this a lot.
The nice thing about the brands is they're very lifestyle driven. So if him [Zachary] and I loved singing karaoke, we would have opened a karaoke bar. We love Tiki, we love cocktails and we love coffee. That's why two of the locations do coffee service. We kind of just live and breathe it. There's a little bit of our style and culture meshed in it. It almost feels like a hobby as work, which is nice.
ZACHARY: Okay, so on that note, to piggyback on Austin's a little bit, we created something that is very lifestyle driven. We always said we wanted a clubhouse for bartenders and friends when we originally opened it. We love hanging out with our friends, we love entertaining, we love hosting, we love good food and we love good drinks. Those are our hobbies that we all have and we built something that allows us to express those hobbies constantly. So for us, it's actually one of the things now that we need to remember- what our other hobbies were so we can spend time doing them.
For example Austin's jumping back into playing guitar more. I've taken up boxing. We both grew up on a Mountain. I think skiing and snowboarding, we definitely are talking about taking a bunch of more trips doing that. Then every time we do that, we look at how can they improve this service model in this hospitality model. Maybe we should open up a bar on the mountain because we've got all these great ideas for it. Travel is a big one for us too, but travel is a real big hobby for us so we're not at work but again we love this and we love everything so when we travel we're just constantly inspired and watching and you know look at the baby, look at the baby.
AUSTIN: You’re always carrying it with you. I'm sure you do. I got some photography stuff and I'm sure that you're the same. It's like you've always got some kind of camera on you. I mean now it's easier with phones but you work your passion into your work and hobby.
You just blend it all in together seamlessly.
AUSTIN: I think anyone that's able to do that is really fortunate and who doesn't look at things like- I'm punching in and punching out. I think we'd both go insane.
ZACHARY: And that's us. This is our hobby. This is what we do outside of work and yet it is our work. As long as we're living a healthy lifestyle and be able to balance that, we're going to be happy.
With us it's almost when we open new concepts, you know we have a fourth coming, it's when we start saying we want to do something else and create a new hobby. And the new hobby usually is a new concept at this point and it allows us to go travel to a place we want to go, study the food, study the drinks, study the culture and then recreate it in a way that we think other people would love to experience it. Bring that gift to everyone else.
What are the highs and the lows, the challenging parts of the whole thing?
ZACHARY: I'll tell you a high, it's a high and a low. Sometimes when we are overworked just because it's been so many hours, I will sometimes look at Austin or myself and say Look, this is the hardest thing we're doing right now and what we're doing is we're entertaining and hosting our friends. We just need to be awake and energized enough to hang out with people that we love and show them a great time. As crazy as that sounds that is the best and the worst of times because all you want to do is go home and go to sleep on occasion.
AUSTIN: I think one of the hardest parts can often be perception because like what Zach is saying, when friends come in, or customers, or new friends, they only see the fun, the show and the entertainment side. It looks a lot of fun from the outside looking in, and it is. But you know, you don't realize that we've worked like right up until that last minute to run home and change. Especially on event days, like New Year's Eve. We do a big pajama party here and it's like right up until half an hour until we're supposed to be there, we run home and shower off, change, throw on a tie, and then it's back at it. People don't understand, I think a lot of what goes into it. So, it's interesting to kind of navigate those conversations and they're like, Oh man this is amazing! and I want to open a bar!
ZACHARY: We throw a party everyday and we hope people show up. And when they do it's great and it's exciting. But it takes a lot of energy. And when you do that every day, that's when it starts to get difficult and that's where the low kind of starts because you really just need to step away to rest and recharge and to be able to do it again and give the same energy that people expect from you.
AUSTIN: And then on that same respect like the highs of it, making new friends and whatnot. I told Zach that I think one of my favorite moments that happened when we first opened umbrella was we walked into the space and it was full.
A lot of friends came, like friends and family during the opening and all this stuff because you have a way of inviting those people and getting a hold of them. But the first couple times we walked into the space and it was full and we didn't know anyone there, that was pretty special. We looked around and we're like none of these people have any reason to be here other than they want to or they've decided to come check it out or they've heard about it or they like the drink or they like the food so that that feeling is that never stops like.
Going back to what you said earlier about some people will see this place and say “Oh I want to start a bar and like it is easy” Do you have any advice to your entrepreneurs thinking of the same business?
AUSTIN: Yeah, I'll let Zach take this one but out of the gates what I was saying about is, if you're someone that tracks hours working, it's not for you. Hospitality is a really-really involved, lifestyle racket. There's always something that doesn't go right or someone's upset about something whether it's on your staff or on the other side of the bar, there’s a customer. So you've got to be prepared to navigate people and you can't log hours. It's just got to be something you want to wake up and do because otherwise it gets real tough, real quick.
ZACHARY: That's a great piece of advice, that's probably the most important advice. Not to say that you can't be successful doing it this way, but I would say make sure that you do love dealing with people. Genuinely love it because you're going to deal with all walks of life, not just customers. There’s employees, and staff, which is the hardest part actually. Dealing with employees and working on that- it's constant work being able to navigate those waters better. We joke that our three bars are our three kids with a hundred personalities, and that's our staff.
Everyone always has something personal coming up and people haven't always learned how to deal with it correctly and so you're dealing with a lot of people in a lot of circumstances. You need to have a level head on how to go about doing that and do it in a way that doesn't frustrate you.
So, being a people person and to manage people is really, really essential. I would practice that before going into it because you're going to be doing all that and that's going to be very dependent on a lot of your enjoyment of this success.
And I would say before diving in, do a little bit of the work up the ladder somewhere else. Just understand it, because at the end of day, it's a business and you need to have a financial understanding to really make it work.
This is a business of nickels and dimes. If you can count your nickels and dimes and watch them you can make a good amount of money. But if you weren't good at doing that, you better find someone who is good at doing that that you trust because you can also lose your ass. So, it's a very tough business.
But at the end of the day, it’s the business that obviously him and I chose to pursue and we're having great time doing it. We've had our little trials and tribulations along the way and still learning as we go so any advice we can give, you reach out to us.
If you were a book, what book would you be and why?
AUSTIN: Oh man! He is good at this, I told you.
ZACHARY: Yeah, I was thinking today, I was like you know we should have asked what the questions are beforehand, normally we do, we flew right in here though, just excited .
AUSTIN: Just raw information
AUSTIN: Yeah, I've got one actually. I mean this is kind of cliché I guess, because probably a million people have used this as an example but The Alchemist.
ZACHARY: Oh God! My favorite book.
In my head, I was like, he’s gonna say The Alchemist.
AUSTIN: Really? you're kidding, you're kidding, yeah well and it's really present because Zach was just talking about the traveling side and then getting out there.
I'll say this though all the answers you're looking for are all around you. They’re in the space. They’re in the community. You have to listen. But if you don't get out and get a different perspective and not burn yourself out or step away for a minute, if you don't go on that adventure or journey, and then come back and revisit it, it's a lot harder to see it. You get blinders on rather than come and being like oh this was here the whole time or why don't we think of that before but it takes taking that trip and exploring. You can't just come up with it by staying in the same place but often the answers are all like there somewhere.
ZACHARY: He took the words out of my mouth. Every time I travel, I take a copy The Alchemists in Spanish with me. There's never a certain part you have to read. I read it front to back or from beginning to end. I will open it up when I'm traveling every day. Just open it and read one to twenty pages wherever I open the book at. It is a lot to do with my perspective that life is the journey and not the destination. So every part is valuable and to keep living, you know my dad always says, “don't forget, live in the present while keeping one eye in the future and never forget the past.” So it’s something to live by, and The Alchemist is a great book.
AUSTIN: I love it
ZACHARY: It's wild that we were all thinking that.
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