Page 39 - PC Living Jan-Feb 2017

PARTNERS IN BUSINESS & LIFECINDY & VINCE GREINERCindy 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 tra c got to her. We just packed up and moved down.PC Living: How did you nd 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 towork 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 wasable 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 iswww.PanamaCityLiving.com • January - February 2017 • 39