Successful Partnerships: Cindy and Vince Greiner

- By Val Schoger, Photography by Savannah Dean

Everyone knows Patches Bar and Grill. The building is small and a block away from the Gulf of Mexico on Panama City Beach’s east end. In the evenings, guests crowd the outdoor area in front of the locale, obviously having a good time enjoying the freshly grilled burgers, ribs, and live music.
Patches has reached cult status among the locals. In fact, Patches won several of Panama City Living’s Reader’s Choice Awards in the last three years – and it wasn’t just a win, it was a win by a landslide in the wings, burgers, and sports bar categories in 2016. A little less known are the owners, Cindy and Vince Greiner, who bought the business in 2013 and remain very humble about their success. “We are proud of the fact that we own a dive bar,” says Vince Greiner with a smile. “It is a literal dive bar, in the ‘diving’ sense. Many of our customers come from the Navy Base and it is what gives our place its name.” Hundreds, maybe thousands of military patches cover the interior wall of the building.
Vince and Cindy had “retirement on the beach” plans and became highly successful with their first business venture. They now have 42 full-time employees and are sharing their personal recipe for success.
PC Living: How did you meet?
Vince Greiner: Oh, we’re going way back. She was dating one of my high school friends. We lived in Michigan then.
Cindy Greiner: It’s where we’re originally from. Vince was in the military, and he was transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia. We were there for, how long?
Vince Greiner: Four years.
Cindy Greiner: We went down south and we stayed down south, we moved to Alabama and to Atlanta for about 20 years when Vince was in the Army.
Vince Greiner: I was a Marksmanship Instructor.
PC Living: When was the first time you came to Panama City?
Vince Greiner: The very first time would have been when we were in the Army, so probably 1988 or ’89. Our first visit was a vacation trip.
PC Living: What do you remember about it?

Cindy Greiner: Oh, we stayed at the Holiday Inn at the other end of the beach. It was beautiful, even then it was beautiful. It wasn’t that long of a drive for us from Fort Benning, it was a nice getaway. Then we just started coming down. Eventually we bought a condo and later we bought a house and moved here full time in 2008.
PC Living: Was it tough to start a new life in Panama City Beach?
Cindy Greiner: I worked for a Pediatric Neurosurgery group in Atlanta for many years. It was harder for me to set the date and say ‘let’s go’.
Vince Greiner: Finally the traffic got to her. We just packed up and moved down.
PC Living: How did you find this place?
Vince Greiner: Friends of ours had restaurants.
PC Living: Isn’t that a deterrent usually?
Vince Greiner: Yeah. The thing was, we thought it was just a quiet little corner pub… a very small business. I envisioned a business plan that had me bartending on Saturday and Sunday afternoons for happy hour.
PC Living: Well, you’re busier than you thought.
Cindy Greiner: Yeah, much, much busier. Which is a good thing.
Vince Greiner: There were horror stories in the beginning, We cleaned it up and hired an excellent chef, Craig Miller. He used to work for Canopies and 30 Degree Blue restaurants.
Cindy Greiner: He really, really turned it around.
Vince Greiner: It was a lot of hard work in the beginning. Because when we moved here, I was still working in sales. Even when we bought it, I was working in sales and she worked for a doctor here in town. I quit my job to run Patches full time and she continued working because we had no idea if we would be successful.
Cindy Greiner: You don’t throw all your eggs in one basket.

Vince Greiner: Finally, it just got to be too much to where Cindy was able to quit her job, and we were both full time.
PC Living: Who’s responsible for what in the business, and how do you work together?
Cindy Greiner: I mainly do the day-to-day operations. I’m the money person, Vince is the marketing person. It works.
PC Living: Do you have to work on certain items together?
Cindy Greiner: Oh sure, absolutely. We develop many event ideas together, like our turkey bowl. We also do the pub crawl and many events throughout the year. I want to keep everyone guessing what’s next.
Vince Greiner: We have 161 seats. The biggest point is when we bought this we had six part-time employees, now we have 42 full time, year-round employees. Our general manager Darleen Vanderveen is the only one who has been here from the very beginning.
PC Living: People like what you’re doing.
Cindy Greiner: Every day is fun.
Vince Greiner: We have a lot of great people that come in through these doors. From Navy diver to famous personality.
Cindy Greiner: Anyone can bring a patch, and we have that person put their patch up. I’ll be honest, I’m not going to remember where, if I staple it in. They’ll remember it.
Vince Greiner: They come back year after year looking for their patch.
PC Living: What do you think gives you as a couple working together an advantage?
Vince Greiner: Checks and balances. I’m always wanting to go do stuff, or buy stuff or something, and she tells me no.
Cindy Greiner: I remind him what we’ve got to do, what we’ve got coming up, and whether we can spend money.
Vince Greiner: We check each other, like I said, it’s checks and balances. I’ll do something, and she looks it over, or vice versa.
PC Living: Do you always agree?
Vince Greiner: No, but we always work things out.

Cindy Greiner: I think in the beginning, we were just working so hard, we wanted it to work. I guess we were almost on autopilot at that point, because you just do it. Now we can concentrate on the bigger picture. We have wonderful staff, and we are very, very picky about who works here. I’m very picky. You must have experience, there’s a lot to it. We take care of our employees, and they know that. That’s why we don’t have a lot of turnover.
Vince Greiner: Every week, I’ll get in the kitchen. I’ll put an apron on, and roll up my sleeves and get on the fryer, make pizzas. I’m right there beside them. I think that means a lot to employees, when the owner is right there doing dishes. We both do dishes.
Cindy Greiner: I remember our first Christmas together at Patches. We gave the employees off and we worked that day. Vince was in the kitchen doing pizzas, and I ran the bar. We were very busy.
PC Living: So, you don’t have kids?
Cindy Greiner: No. No kids. We have been married 28 years. Really, this is our family. All these people, that’s our family. There are many who don’t have anyone either for Christmas, we see it all the time. The military especially.
PC Living: So what’s your recipe for success? There’s a combination of things that seem to come together.
Cindy Greiner: People ask us that, what did you do? How did you do it? I say, well if we knew, we’d be opening all kinds of things.
Vince Greiner: We’d be doing all kinds of stuff.
PC Living: Then it wouldn’t be the same.
Cindy Greiner: No, it wouldn’t. People are asking if we want to move or expand Patches. You can’t.
Vince Greiner: You can’t move this.
Cindy Greiner: It is the way it always was, we’ve just added to it.
Vince Greiner: We’re done adding to it, we’re just going to maintain now and stay on top of everybody.
PC Living: I’m getting a good idea of how you work together. I guess you will be working on Valentine’s day, too. Will you be here?
Cindy Greiner: Yup.
Vince Greiner: We’ll be here.

Patches Pub and Grill is located on 4723 Thomas Dr., Panama City Beach
patchespub.com