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Ray’s Place, a longtime Kent State landmark, to open second location
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: April 10, 2014
Ray’s Place, which has been a fixture in downtown Kent for over seven decades, is branching out.
The new Ray’s Place will be located in Fairlawn, in the place that was most recently occupied by the Winking Lizard, on Ghent Road across from the Summit Mall. The Fairlawn space will be slightly larger than the Kent location—6,500 square feet to Kent’s 6,000.
“We are going to try to give the new space a ‘Ray’s’ flavor,” said Charles (who everyone knows as “Charlie”) Thomas, longtime owner of the original Ray’s Place. “Our goal is to have it open mid-April.” When done, this will be the first time that Ray’s will be in two places at once.
That goal has been moving forward through time for a number of months, said Thomas.
“We entered our first conversation with a broker about renting the Fairlawn space in August 2012,” said Thomas. “But the Lizard didn’t actually move until April of ’13. So, then, three or four months into negotiations after that, the landlord decided to sell the shopping center. At that point, everything was up in the air. I had to renegotiate everything again.”
More delays ensued as the new owner refaced the center where Ray’s will be. “The opening keeps getting pushed forward,” said Thomas. “But we are finally going to get it open. Lots of people are waiting for us to open.”
Thomas, now 68, bought Ray’s Place in December 1978. The originator of the tavern, Ray Salitore, opened it in 1937. Thomas is only the fourth owner of the tavern once described as “America’s first sports bar,” and which was once awarded a spot by Esquire magazine as one of the country’s top 10 college bars. And Michael Symon, Cleveland’s super-chef, has said the he learned what a hamburger was supposed to be at Ray’s.
There is even a book about it, called Meet Me at Ray’s, one of the most common phrases heard around Kent. One review of that book said: “For literally thousands, Ray’s Place is synonymous with Kent State University and Kent, Ohio.”
Ray’s approach was unique even when Thomas bought it, he said. The bar featured what would then have been the equivalent of foreign and craft beers. These days, Thomas, in this age of craft beering, has a rotating supply of over 60 beer taps.
But in 1978, Thomas had recently received his business marketing management degree from Kent State University. Sporting long hair and unwilling to cut it, he said that it was difficult to find employment in the area.
As a stop-gap, “I got a job managing at The Loft,” a bar that still exists next to Ray’s, said Thomas. He stopped into Ray’s for an afterwork drink, he said, and overheard the owner complaining about the business.
“I said ‘I’ll buy it.’ And I did. It was really kind of an accident,” he said.
It was also a deal that would likely be impossible today, he said. With a purchase price of a little under $100,000, Thomas went around to local banks for loan money. And he got it.
“I don’t think that would happen today,” he said, although with his success, he said that banks are now coming to him.
Thomas has seen many changes in his business since he acquired the place in 1978. He has changed and expanded the menu over time, and has a stable, longtime cook. “In my 36 years here, I’ve probably had 15 different menus,” said Thomas.
He went through the transition out of what was known as “3.2 beer”, as the drinking age went from 18 to 20 to 21 in the state, changing his customer base. During that transition, he found that fewer people were coming to the bar to see music, which was played upstairs. He ended the music and renovated the upstairs to be, in effect, a second restaurant. His business started to be more food-oriented, and therefore, more family-oriented, he said.
“Now we have people in here from infants to 90-year-olds,” Thomas said, adding that, “with our emphasis on food, people seem to be going home earlier.”
Why expand a business at an age when most people are slowing down or stopping work entirely?
“I love what I do,” said Thomas. “I have never been bored one day here.”