The Community, Connections & Commerce Podcast, presented by OUE & St. Clairsville Chamber - Community, Connections, & Commerce Episode 8 with TJ Stewart

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

Never a good idea to put metal in the microwave. Always a good idea, however, to invest in your community and also a good idea to go to the Knowlestown Diner in St. Clairsville. This is Community Connections and Commerce. I'm Drake Watson, as always, with my co-host, Wendy Anderson, and our very special guest this morning, T.J. Stewart, the owner of the Newelstown Diner in St. Clairsville. T.J., we really appreciate you giving us your time this morning,

and we are thrilled to have you on. You're quite welcome. Thank you, T.J., for coming in. You're welcome, Wendy. So tell us a little bit about you. Who's T.J. Stewart? My family is from the Valley. Actually, my family came here in 1858. They had six sons and six different families went from there.

My father became a state trooper in 1967, was stationed in Marietta. So I was born in Marietta, was there for two years. He was transferred to St. Clairsville and I've been in that town since. Okay, cool. So you're not only a business owner, you're also a St. Clairsville police officer. I am. I started with St. Clairsville police in June of 1998 after working for the state of Ohio for six years prior to that, and have been a police officer since. Still currently am. Okay.

So thank you, by the way, for what you do for St. Clairsville, because I know I appreciate you very, very much. Well, we get a lot of support. Thank you for that. Yeah. So let's talk about Nolstown Diner. Okay. So when did you buy it?

Well, I created the Nolstown Diner. Myself and Mike Troelis, who's another police officer, was with St. Clairsville. I was, through high school, I drove a 1955 Chevy that I had restored myself and loved it. And was always intrigued by the 50s. So I'm driving around on Midnight Shift working in a local business, which was Ench by the 50s. So I'm driving around on midnight shift working. And a local business, which was Enchanted Sound and Video, had moved out of the building we're currently in. And the owner of the building was inside cleaning up. And I stopped and I said, I would like to open a 50s diner.

And he gave me a price. And I began remodeling the place. And Mike and I spent night after night building the place ourselves. So we didn't buy anything we created it that you know when you walk into Newelstown it does give you that sense of nostalgia that 1950s soda pop soda you know what they call what soda jerks and just the idea of the tables and your decor in there is really reminiscent of what you wanted. We paid close attention to that and bought authentic furniture, flooring. You did?

Decorations, yeah. I want to ask you about the outdoor, which is now kind of a big deal for the diner. How much emphasis have you guys put on that in recent months or years to have the outdoor seating? I think that's something when you drive by it every day, you see that and you see the lights at nighttime. And, and that really adds to the feel of the whole thing. We, we started the outdoor seating almost right away. And we've been through several sets of furniture over the years. But it really caught on a year and a half ago when we put a liquor license on the ballot. Now, we're not trying to become a bar.

Right. But we do serve everything that you can serve in the state of Ohio legally. And if you want that with your meal. We didn't change the diner in any way. There's one thing I did not want to do was jeopardize that. But what that did was spur the outside seating. So we have a lot of outside seating now. And as far as the lighting goes, it doesn't. I'm not going to say it does a whole lot for our business, but what does do is

liven up Main Street, which was the idea. Yeah. And we talked about Main Street just before we came on and it's kind of a thriving and quickly growing area throughout St. Clairsville, of course, with some of the other things that are opening there. And you guys certainly contribute to that. This is something that we talk about usually later on with our guests. But since we kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier, obviously you've been in Ohio your whole life. And you've been in St. Clairsville for a really long time. And has there ever been any thought of going elsewhere?

We've had a ton of guests that are from here. They end up going somewhere else and then they come back. You don't have that story. Obviously, I don't think you have ever wanted to. You clearly don't want to go anywhere else. But what about the Ohio Valley keeps you here and keeps you happy with where you're at? I don't know. I can only tell you that it's a very comfortable place to live.

I wanted to raise my kids here. My youngest two just turned 18, so I've accomplished that. They all love it here. None of them have left. And that's an accomplishment if you ask me. That's huge. To keep your kids, to make them like the Valley enough to stay here and contribute to the Valley. My daughter left for four years to go to the Marines and she came back. So everybody in my family loves the Valley. I can't really explain it. I just have deep roots here and have no desire to go anywhere else. I do have a desire to maybe head south for January and February every year.

Yeah, makes sense. But other than that, I'm not leaving. I'm with you. I am so with you. So you have the same – News Radio 1170 WWPA. More local coverage starts right now. So what do you look for when you hire someone,

and what is it that connects them with a diner? All I can tell you is that age has had very little to do with it. We have 16-year- year old employees and we have 50 year old employees. And, uh, what we look for is loyalty and that's a two way street. We're very loyal to them too. Um, anything that any needs that we see in their lives, we try to take care of quietly and any needs we have, they step in and take care of. If I choose to go on vacation we have such dependable people and i do look for that when we interview sure you know if

i leave can you function and they and they do so well and i i i can only tell you that uh there there's no specific things i look for i just need to trust them i need to uh understand that they will take over if i'm not there. Or Tara is now my co-owner. She's my fiance and she bought Mike out four years ago of the diner. So she's my partner now. But we can leave and go on vacation and they're super. They're very dependable, very trustworthy, and that's all I need. That's really all I need out of them. Okay. So when you talked about Tara, when I go up there, I always see her there. Either she's running food, or she's just talking to your guests, or she's running out the door to go pick up something and come back.

So she's really invested in this as well as you are. So one thing I did notice is this is the hub of St. Clair's World. If you lunchtime, because that's usually when I go is lunchtime. And I see everybody from all different walks of life in there. And I think that is partly your success. Yeah, it is. It is. It's a political place. I mean, we have all sides of politics coming in there, and they do their little bantering.

And we have families. We have just about anybody you could imagine, and not even from necessarily St. Clairsville. Right. We have had people move here from other places for the oil industry that are just as regular as anybody that's ever lived here. And then we have a 90-some-year-old man who's been in this town his whole life that is our mayor, basically, of the diner. Right. It's just wonderful. Yeah.

I saw him the other day sitting in there, and several people were leaving, and they went over and said goodbye to him and have a great day, and it was nice to see you. So that's really kind of cool. Genuine soul. Yeah. Many of them are. Yeah. So I noticed that you had a couple things here that you showed me, which I read a letter. So how do you continue your positive outlook

when you have some negativity? Well, the negativity is never going to go away. We have been put down pretty hard over the years just for being police officers sometimes. A lot of people that don't like us always call it a cop shop and said, don't go in there and a lot of things like that. But what we have done over the years is I have been a big proponent of not worrying about profit. I just need to pay the bills and I need to pay our employees good. I have wanted to to make a bunch of money from it i wanted the diner to be there so we treat our employees good we keep our prices low

i can't accomplish the five dollar bill walk in and out when we open we did that for a good decade five dollar bill you can get your lunch drink included and walk out can't quite do that anymore no but we say we are reinventing funeral service at Care Funeral and Cremation, but the families we serve say it best. Care Funeral went above and beyond to make sure our loved one was given a respectable and dignified funeral. So we do. And we try to give back as much as we can. We employ people. We make sure that they're not just employed, but they're able to work for just us.

Care Funeral and Cremation. Now with monthly payments along with the services and facilities and having a place downtown st clairsville that adds to the town is always been our goal it has and since you um had the oh the liquor license passed so what your hours so what i will tell you what i heard like in before all this start went before it was a you know was voted on always going to be a mess we're going to have drunk people walking down the streets i can't believe they're able to do that um but what have you seen since you increased your hours on friday and sat? We have had zero incidents of anything.

We know we're not there to have drunks. We don't even have a bar. Right. We have a counter that we had. We've always had. So we're not a we're not a beer joint. We're not a we're not a bar in any way. We have some live music sometimes, but it's it's real mellow um basically uh zero incidents good zero people stumbling out the door and um as far as i know no complaints whatsoever i have not heard any complaints i've just heard um just people being really excited that it's there and after work you can go have a have a drink after work if you want to. After a long day or a long week, it's the place to go. Specifically, people ask for a place to go have a beer and a cheeseburger.

Not that there's not places around. Right. But there's a lot of people that live real close. News Radio 1170. We have a lot of walkers that come up. We are that place. You can get a draft beer and a cheeseburger. But we're more of the diner, leaning towards the diner,

where you can get a mimosa or a Bloody Mary, and that's kind of where we were headed. Or a nice summer drink outside. That's kind of what we were aiming for, not a beer joint. Right. No, I think it's really popular. I see a lot of people in there all the time. Now, you close at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, right?

Yes. Okay. Except on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Right. So you guys are open to when? 9. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday? Yes.

We're open until 9 p.m. We would like to expand our hours. One problem is finding anybody to apply for a job anymore is a problem. Another thing is Uptown does kind of roll up the streets in St. Clairsville at night. It's a pretty quaint town, and people calm down. And we want to keep it calm, but we currently as you know working on something called Dora along with Audrey's Avenue and hopefully what can happen is and I'm not saying alcohol is the answer to anything I'm not I'm not claiming that at all because I know what bad it can do

for my career however what I am saying is if a shop is open which we need some storefronts filled. If a shop is open and somebody's able to walk out with a fancy little drink in their hand and walk up and down the street, they're likely to go in that shop. They're likely to spend money because if they're like me, if I have a drink, I'm Amazon shopping all the time. So that's kind of what we're looking to bring some life back to Main Street. And even though you can like or dislike the alcohol part of it, but it's true. It is. It's just a fact. People spend money when they have a drink and calm down.

They do. You look at places like Columbus or Pittsburgh. I mean, that's kind of how their streets work. And you notice that all over the place. You mentioned folks coming in from different walks of life and all kinds of different people, different political people, different ages. And that's kind of the connections part of our, of our show is, is how can we bring people together? And you say that you have a, you know, a healthy way of doing that, I'd imagine. It's incredible. I mean, if you,

if you come in on a Friday or Saturday night and talk to the people that are in there, which everyone would talk to you to see the variety that are in there. There's everything from millionaires to kids just starting out. It's the craziest thing. And everybody is equal. Everybody talks and sits together, and it's just a good time. We love it. They're all there for the same reason. Exactly.

Well, it's that feel. Like I said, I mentioned earlier, you have a very warm and, literally, warm and fuzzy feeling when you walk in. You feel safe safe a safe place to be that's that's nice to hear and i'm glad very glad to hear that um we also i mean i'm this this is a little plug for us but we buy the best of the best ingredients for everything we make and it shows and we buy for instance we buy our meats all from jacob and sons and martin's ferry now when people know that we get customers for that reason yeah yeah and we try to support as much local as we possibly can and always have since the day we open the doors and they do the same for us

and see that's what we're all about oh yeah because know, we're all about that local, shopping local, staying local, being local, having fun local. Yep. I know I will say my favorite burger, which I absolutely love this burger, is the Tommy Burger. That was created because when my son was little, he loved Big Macs. Uh-huh. When I built the diner, he was three. Okay. And he would go up there with me while we were working, and he loved Big Macs. When I built the diner, he was, he was three. Okay. And he would go up there with me while we were working and he loved Big Macs. So when we opened, I wanted to have a Big Mac, basically, but we can't have a Big Mac. Right. So the Big Boy Burger, which is the same thing.

So we created that and named it Tommy Burger because it was because of him we had it and it's been wildly popular. Oh that and your homemade fries with brown gravy. Yeah we fresh cut our fries since the day we opened the doors to. Where do the potatoes come from? Jebbia's. Okay yeah we get we get almost all of our produce from Jebbia's. That is really cool. I'm sure obviously that's much better than the the ingredients you would find in things like a Big Mac or whatever. Yeah so it's all fresh I mean it really is fresh from the pickles to to the button to the. Our pickles are wildly popular too. Oh my god I love your pickles. They come in and ask for for a box of pickles and we yeah happy to give them that. I don't know why but i don't know they

are the best pickles they come out of a five gallon bucket yeah five we got five gallons at a time we buy but you would never think but they're they're really good yeah so do you have any plans on expanding we we do we would like to put a deck on the back oh okay add some outdoor seating yeah we're currently working with the building owners. We never did purchase the building. Okay. And I prefer it that way because for different tax reasons, IRS reasons, it's better to do what we're doing now. And our landlords, our building owners are wonderful people. They are.

Absolutely wonderful people. And they have always worked with us. And truthfully, I would say they give us back twofold what we pay them in rent every month. They're that good of customers. They are. We're currently working with them to possibly add on to the back. And maybe even in the future, the shop that they are in next door, we would like to expand into there. No hurry on that.

No plan on date. But we have talked about it. Yeah. That is awesome. So obviously, a ton of folks, you know, I'm from St. Clair'sville. So I know I've never been in there. I really need to get in there. I wish I had been before.

But I know all about it. I've heard about the Nolstown Diner. And I see it every day as I'm driving through. And I'm sure that's the case with many folks from around here. You know, they know what it is. They know that there's that 50s feel and the aesthetic. And as she said, that warm and fuzzy feel that you get when you go in there. But how do you attract somebody who might be coming from a different area

and they happen to pass through St. Clairsville? Maybe they get off the highway on Route 9 or whatever. How do you attract somebody there and really, you know, put yourselves out there? Like this is the spot to go if you want a good burger. We don't. We don't do that. But it's crazy the amount of people that get off the interstate because the internet told them to. I don't know a lot about those sites, the food sites and all that.

But we have so many people that jump off the interstate and said that it was recommended from whatever app they're in. And they fall in love with the place and we've become a meeting place a halfway point for some people uh when they meet people and they they find us we don't the reason we don't advertise a lot is because we can only seat 40 people inside sure and if if there's 40 people in there already advertising is going to cause people to come to the door and leave. Right. So I'm not trying to not put us out there more, but I don't want to make it worse for people coming there. So we never have really jumped on the advertising.

Yeah. And it's worked out for us. Well, it's good because then, I mean, it's kind of what I call digital word of mouth, right? It is. You have people that, you know, the folks that already are established in the Valley and they know about it and they tell their friends about it.

And then also somebody who's coming, like you said, who might be traveling and they stop in. And then if they have a cousin two weeks later that happens to be going through that same area, they're like, hey, you should stop at this spot. We also have been there long enough now. I have had, we've had people get married in the diner that met in the diner. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I've been there long enough now i have had we've had people get married in the diner that met in the diner

oh wow yeah and i've been there long enough now that um kids have been born brought in there by their parents and now have kids and bring their babies in that's that and that's pretty often that's a feel-good that's a feel-good moment when you see that yeah i like it when um we did our christmas tree lighting last year and you guys were so busy there was actually a wait i had more people like they wouldn't they went to the event that we had downtown st clairsville but they you guys were i you could hardly see your lights because of all the people you guys meeting the chamber what an incredible thing you guys pulled off on that one wasn't that good that wasn't great till this year i have seen a lot through the years that was the best i've seen and i can't i can't imagine what's coming next. That was wonderful. Listen, Lisa has Lisa Kindler, my assistant.

She's going to make this one this year really stand out. Good luck topping that one. I hope you do because that was good. I know. Good for the town. Yeah, it is good for the town. And that's what we're trying to do is bring people through St. Clair's. We'll not just stop at Sam's and that plaza there and then go around on the highway.

We want people to come through town just to see it. Our fall decorating. You guys decorate for fall. Yeah. Next door. They decorate for fall. And it's beautiful just to see people. Some lady told me that she actually dressed her grandkids in their pajamas.

And they started out at 40 somewhere, and they came through St. Clairsville. That was their highlight. They wanted to see. It's pretty incredible, especially during the holidays. But one thing that does bring people back to your question is when any incident happens on the interstate and they have to reroute traffic onto route 40 the exposure we get is absolutely amazing it is it's overwhelming so i it the bad comes with the good right but um that we get a lot of people that that find us that way yeah and that pass through the area on a regular basis. And then they see that town. Not just our place, but the town.

And it's a neat place. Well, it's kind of the story of the Pixar movie, Cars. You know, with my age, that was my favorite movie growing up. Probably still is. But, you know, a lot of people, they bypass that little town because of the interstate and everything. And there's so many of those towns. Yeah. It's sad.

That's a whole other conversation. But I love that when the town actually... Sometimes, sometimes like when I'm traveling from here to Columbus, I'll take 40 instead just to go through some of those old towns and to see what's there. Because there's so many spots that you don't really notice. I tell people that all the time. If they get rerouted for any reason, I don't care where you're at, instead of being mad, if you're stuck in traffic whatever stop and look around yeah it's stuff you drive past all the time it is and don't notice look at the houses

look at things and it's it's awesome and st clare'sville is very famous for that the courthouse alone oh yeah i mean i've been working at the police department for a lot of years and people that have come there from out of town other places just take pictures of the courthouse it's amazing yeah because it's a beautiful courthouse but we do have a beautiful town um and it's a hometown feel and so our listeners out there if you want someplace good to eat just to reminisce on the 50s please stop at nolstown diner because it's one of the best places that I've been for lunch, breakfast. My husband and I love the breakfast there on Sunday

mornings. Thank you, Wendy. You're welcome. So I think that's all. We've got a little bit more time. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the police officer aspect of all this. And of course, we mentioned something about being good for the town earlier. And what's also good for the town, of course, we mentioned something about being good for the town earlier.

And what's also good for the town, of course, is you guys. And we thank you for that, and we appreciate your service. And, again, we talked about before we came on the misconception that you guys are the bad guys. Well, you know, I've always been taught that you guys are there to help people out and maintain the safety. And St. Clairville strikes me as a very safe place to be and a safe place to live. And I was just wondering what your take is on how how safe it is and what kind of crime you see, if you would even consider it crime or wrongdoing. I don't hear of any kind of violence at all.

Well, just just to clear that up, we get the same thing. Consider consider us a precinct in a large city or a small town, but consider that small town a precinct. We get the same thing the rest of the world gets. We have I-70. We have Route 9. We get a lot of stuff coming through. We have one of the most successful drug-sniffing dogs in the entire Ohio Valley. It's amazing.

We get a lot of arrests from that. So as far as crime goes, we get it. Now, you don't know about it because we sweep up fast. Our city and our residents have supported us to the point where if you call for the police, you can expect us 60 seconds or less at your house. There's enough of us on duty, and we hammer it. We also are fortunate enough to have Richland Township Police in St. Clair. We have the Belmont County Sheriff's Office in St. Clairsville.

And you get the Highway Patrol. And the Highway Patrol in St. Clairsville. That's why my parents always told me, never do anything wrong in St. Clairsville, because there are so many things that could get you for it. Eyes watching you, yes. And most of the places in the county are pretty fortunate when it comes to neighboring departments. But I can tell you, if I watch a lot of videos of this stuff now, if we pull you over and a fight starts, there's going to be so many cop cars around you within five minutes, you're not even going to believe it.

Bank robberies, we've had a few bank robberies through the years, and we are just flooded. So we're very fortunate there. believes that it doesn't matter how far your street is off the beaten path or you deserve a cop car going past your house as much as main street yeah so we do that we routinely go past everybody's house in that town we make sure that we notice things that don't belong cars that don't belong it's a small enough town we can do stuff like that yeah and our guys love our town yeah how many is on the police force? We have 10 full-time. Wow. And we have three part-time.

And the three part-time, a couple of them were full-time, and they took other jobs. So they stayed with us. But... That says a lot. Yeah. Well, actually, nine right now. We're hiring a school resource officer right now to replace one of our guys that left for Zanesville. Okay.

Wow. But the city takes very good care of us. Sure. And I'm not just talking about the pay and the city and council themselves. I'm talking about our residents. Our residents are so good to us, and we appreciate that. So you get a lot of bad out there that you see on the news and stuff. But in reality, you know, when somebody says it's really hard to be a cop, I can't believe you do that. So you get a lot of, you get a lot of bad out there that you see on the news and stuff. But in reality, you know, when, when somebody says it's really hard to be a cop, I can't believe you

do that, man, our residents take care of us. Yeah. They're good to us. Our businesses are good to us. We're good to them back. I'm not saying that, but we're treated very well. I don't want to, I don't want the media to spoil that. Most cops, most places are treated very well. We have our bad moments. There's no doubt about that. And we make mistakes too. But overall, most of us that are there are there for all the right reasons. So this is a less serious question, but I've always was told that on your car, on the outside of your car,

you're not allowed to have any kind of light other than red, yellow, and white. And I see folks driving around with LEDs, green lights, blue lights under the car, you're not allowed to have any kind of light other than red, yellow, and white. And I see folks driving around with LEDs, green lights, blue lights under the car, and I wanted to get your take on if that's legal or not. It's not. Not visible. Perfect. So now I don't sound like a jerk whenever I call it out and I'm driving along the road. Well, here's the situation. You can't. You can have lights under your car shining down on the road, but we can't. You're not supposed to physically be able to see the light itself i see um the problem with it is is we're really outnumbered now yeah you know and it's a matter of attended windows is another problem it's a matter of you know how much how much do we want to beat up our people right you know and is it worth it yeah

right not saying we don't want to enforce the law, but is it worth it? It's just like if you're parked the wrong direction, are we going to ticket everybody for that? If you're five miles over the speed limit, it's illegal. Do we want to ticket you for that? So we have to choose our battles, and we're human. We know that kids don't know sometimes, and they do things, so we talk to people.

But overall, unless it's causing a problem, we don't bother people. I do things so we talk to people but um overall unless it's causing a problem we don't we don't bother people i think most officers just like that now i know that it's illegal so so i don't have to be right but i'd like to be right i did not even know that and i didn't know i'm sorry and i'm 63 years old did not know it was illegal to go five miles over oh yes i just thought that was that wiggle room that you could just know what the courts generally allow for a radar to be off by three so we wouldn't write anybody for three over we don't write anybody for five over don't get me wrong but we can yeah oh i'm glad the illegal is illegal i mean so when i'm passing that cardiac center at two in the morning i better

make sure i'm going 35. Because I see you guys there all the time. That and the old convenient location. Yeah. Well, we are, you know, one of our guys is, well, a couple of our guys are really heavy into drugs. Now, what people don't understand is we stop a lot of cars, not necessarily to pick on you, not necessarily. But we want to know who's in our town. Yeah, sure. And you want us to know who's in our town yeah sure yeah and you want us to know absolutely so we we stop talk to people we don't our department writes very few tickets i mean very few i'm talking a dozen a month okay we do a lot

of traffic stops but um sometimes at the end of that traffic stop you're going to get a hershey bar handed to you and a warning ticket. Really? Compliments of our mayor, yes. No, she doesn't tell anybody that. I didn't know that. Oh, that's fact. We don't want to be enemies.

We want to be friends. That traffic stop can end in anger or it can end in thank you for being here and thank you for reminding me. That's what we do. Our department's pretty awesome like that we had somebody don't come in and donate a lot of money last year and said i want you to buy gift cards and hand them out on traffic stops wow and we did we did we bought a lot of gift cards really from in-town businesses all of them good and and it what what a nice good thing to do. Wow.

Well, we'd like to end it here with a thank you. Very much for coming on. Thank you. This has been T.J. Stewart, the owner of Newell's Town Diner, St. Clair'sville Police Officer. That's Wendy Anderson. I'm Drake Watson, as always, for Community Connections and Commerce. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.