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An Intimate (Restaurant) Connection: Amanda and Paul Danielson

The Danielsons' Story: Wearing protective haz-mat suits and stepping gingerly through piles of moldering debris in the clammy, gray basement of a century-old insane asylum, Amanda and Paul Danielson found just the place for their new restaurant.

Seven masonry ceiling arches, which might as well have been in the Catacombs of ancient Rome, “now make up the most intimate part of our dining room,” Amanda says. Where countless troubled souls once suffered their own dark visions, the Danielsons saw light. When they were done, they named it for a star.

But their ironic choice for Trattoria Stella’s location wasn’t the Danielsons’ key move in creating a startup with revenues of $2 million in its second year. Intimacy, they say, was the key.

Amanda was born into restaurants. Her family owned Big Boy franchises near their home in Birmingham, Mich., and there she learned early on about managing a food service business. But something was missing.

“There was not a lot of excitement there,” Amanda says. “It seemed so much of the business was about hitting the bottom line, putting warm bodies in chairs. I wanted it to be more important than that, more enriching than that.”

After traveling overseas and experiencing an intimacy and familiarity between staff and patrons in European restaurants, she came to a conclusion: “One day, I wanted to own a restaurant that would have a direct impact on people and the community.”

Paul also grew up in Birmingham and “fell into the restaurant business” after college. His experience was nearly opposite from Amanda’s. “I had always worked with people who owned their own restaurants,” Paul says. “I had worked with people who had that passion about their food and business.”

The couple met in 1999 at a restaurant where Paul was a manager. They fell in love and forged a plan for their future: They’d open their own owner-operated, community-focused restaurant in five years.

The next year, they moved north to Traverse City, Mich., a thriving tourist city on Caribbean-blue Grand Traverse Bay. “We wanted our business to work around our lives, rather than our lives to work around our business,” Paul says.

The Danielson's Key Move: Creating an Intimate Connection

Because they didn’t have the money to open right away, they found work in local restaurants, keeping alive the dream of owning their own place. Paul put together a detailed business plan and they borrowed money from family to get started with an initial stake of $80,000.

The 170-seat Italian restaurant opened in July, 2004, serving lunch and dinner seven days a week in the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, still being transformed from the buildings and sprawling campus of the former Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane. From 1885 to 1989, asylum inmates raised most of their own food on the grounds. Trattoria Stella’s mission is entirely in keeping with that history.

To the Danielsons, the restaurant represents much more than even historic bricks and mortar. Their guiding principles are:

• Source the best ingredients from our neighborhood.
• Support local businesses personally and professionally.
• Continue to encourage a healthy and happy community through education.

The staff of 63 are people who “in their hearts believe the same kind of thing we do,” Paul says. Their employers didn’t have to indoctrinate them in the sense of community and giving back. “It’s not something we print on T-shirts,” Paul says. “People working here come to understand it.”

The Danielsons walk the talk. They give one percent of their earnings to charity, support education programs dedicated to food and wine, teach classes and organize trips to Italy. They circulate among patrons at their restaurant, answering questions and listening to what they have to say.

They buy locally, even listing the names of their vendor farms at the top of the daily menu. “We get our honey from one person,” Amanda says. “We buy our Bibb and romaine lettuce from one farmer.” And customers react happily to seeing the local farms listed. ”It shows we’re very serious about our business, and people realize it’s just better food.”

With 2-year-old daughter Sofia in tow, she shops in and around downtown Traverse City, always looking for more local sources. “Sometimes it’s more expensive, sometimes it isn’t,” Amanda says. “But it’s a great feeling knowing you’re helping them (local stores) stay in business.”

In turn, those shop owners have become patrons of the restaurant.

The business has a loyal following. Critics have awarded the restaurant four stars, and it was featured in the August 2006 issue of Wine Spectator.

“We’re not just ‘the next restaurant,’” says Amanda, who recently passed two of three sections in the stringent Advanced Sommelier Exam in San Francisco, and plans to retake it in 2007.

Paul agrees. “We’re looking at this as a long-term situation. We believe we’re doing something for the profession and for a better world for Sofia and ourselves.”

Before-and-after images courtesy of The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. Photo credits as shown.