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Oui, Fast & French remains at Broad Street location
By Rachel Pleasant
Staff Writer
It’s theirs, all theirs. The building at 98 Broad Sreet, the long-time home of Fast & French Café Restaurant, now officially belongs to restaurateurs Jean-Marie Mauclet and Gwylene Gallimard.
The husband and wife team, with time and finances pitted against them, mustered their strength and savings recently in an effort to buy the building. Their bid of $650,010—one they contend is way out of proportion with the property’s value—turned out to be just enough.
Now, it is time to make some much needed repairs and upgrades.
“It’ll be about $40,000 in repairs,” says Gallimard, a native of Paris.
The changes will not all be aesthetic, but they will make a difference to customers and employees.
Mauclet and Gallimard plan to invest in new air conditioning and bathrooms, which will be handicap-accessible.
The roof over the kitchen also will be repaired. Renovations will be made to an unused second-story space, which the couple plans to eventually lease for about $20 per square foot.
“It will probably become an office,” says Mauclet, also a Paris native.
The income that office will generate for the pair will come in handy considering the loan they took out to buy the building.
Getting their money’s worth
Fast & French, also known as Gaulart & Maliclet, has occupied the building for 21 years. Mauclet and Gallimard, who started out paying about $1,000 in rent on the building but over the years saw that increase to about $2,000, had long hoped to buy the space.
Recently, when the county courthouse complex was finished and the county government no longer needed the buildings it had purchased along Broad and King streets, Mauclet and Gallimard got their chance.
Gallimard said she and her husband negotiated the first right of refusal on the property, giving them the right to match or better any bids brought on the building.
After a bank appraisal, the Fast & French team say they were prepared to pay $525,000.
When the county received a bid of $650,000—the only offer made on the property, according to Walt Smalls, the county’s head of facilities management—the clock started ticking.
“We had 48 hours to match that,” Mauclet said. “We couldn’t afford not to buy it.”
Mauclet and Gallimard’s winning bid of $650,010–only $10 above the competing offer made by Gary Odachowski and Richard Serrins, who wanted to operate a restaurant in the location—was obtained through a combination of bank loans and $125,000 of the couple’s and café’s savings.
Though they say they paid too much for the building, pointing to larger structures nearby that sold for less, the purchase provides them much more than a roof over their heads.
“When you create a business, you don’t own anything if you don’t own the building,” Gallimard says.
Being able to purchase the building is a David-over-Goliath victory, adds Mauclet.
“We don’t have many small businesses left,” Mauclet said. “Gap (the chain retailer with a location at 269 King St.) doesn’t make a community. We fought for the little guys.”
A slice of history
Though the 98 Broad St. victory is likely the most well-publicized chapter of this couple’s time in the food business, it is only one of many.
After time spent in other parts of the United States and Canada, Gallimard, an art student, and Mauclet, who studied political science and architecture, came to Charleston in 1984, intent on opening a restaurant.
They chose this city because it was the only one they could find that had anything close to a European feel.
They took a liking to the 98 Broad St. location and got to work. Fast & French required about $50,000 in start-up, which paid for remodeling, furniture and equipment.
The restaurant is owned by Fast & French Inc., a corporation with 18 shareholders.
“In the beginning, it was a learning curve. We weren’t from Charleston. We weren’t in this type of business. We started pretty small. Now we have 25 people working for us,” Gallimard says.
After the first five or six years, Fast & French started running well, and the pair opened a second location in Cary, N.C., near Raleigh. Fast & French the sequel lasted about 15 years before the couple closed it, a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a desire to concentrate on the Charleston location.
Gallimard and Mauclet agree they want to keep the downtown Charleston spot operating indefinitely. Although they aren’t interested in franchising, they would like to see restaurants in other locations and are interested in playing an advisory role.
“I’ve got someone right now who wants to open one in Mount Pleasant,” Mauclet says.
For now, any additional locations are a question for the future. Mauclet and
Gallimard are content to revel in their most recent success—and they are not alone.
Businessman Henry Berlin, owner of Berlin’s 114-120 King. St., is glad to know Fast & French is staying.
“We need places like that downtown. Fast & French has a flavor of its own, a local flavor,” he says.
Rachel Pleasant is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at rpleasant@crbj.com.
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