Claremont
Mike and Christine Charest, the new owners of the former New Socials Bar and Grill — now Taverne on the Square — bought the business about five weeks ago from Shane Bodkins and Isabel Guillen.
Last week, the Charests oversaw several days of interior renovations to reconfigure the space before the restaurant reopened on July 14.
“Had the biggest lunch we have ever had today,” Mike Charest said by phone on Friday afternoon. “It was great. I love it.”
The renovations increased the bar area, and one of the walls closing off a room for private functions has been replaced by louvre doors, which create more of an “open-space” concept that Charest said he thinks will be well received.
The path to buying the establishment began several months ago, said the 57-year-old Charest, who retired from a career in financial management last year.
“I got bored,” Charest said with a chuckle in a recent interview, explaining why he and his wife bought the popular restaurant, located at the corner of Pleasant Street and Opera House Square in the renovated Brown Block.
He had been coming to New Socials for years, often with clients, and he and his wife got to know Bodkins and Guillen, who opened New Socials — which formerly was Sophie and Zeke’s — in 2010. Three years later, they opened Revolution Cantina, which serves Mexican and Latin fare. The restaurant also is located in Opera House Square.
Bodkins and Guillen are opening a second Revolution Cantina in Orlando, Fla., where they are moving to care for Guillen’s elderly mother, Bodkins said by phone from Florida last week. They will keep the Claremont location.
“We will work with the managers in Claremont,” Bodkins said.
The Taverne on the Square building — the Brown Block — recently was purchased by Omeros Realty, of Plymouth, N.H., from the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority for $500,000, according to City Manager Guy Santagate.
Charest said they have signed a long-term lease with the new owner.
The stability of the visible downtown corner is important to the city’s ongoing efforts to bring more people downtown, especially in light of the recent departure of Everything Bridal and Everything Tuxedo, which moved to Lebanon at the end of last week.
The businesses were in the Union Block, across from the Brown Block.
Though he has never owned a restaurant, Charest’s parents did, so Charest said he knows the business and the demands it requires.
Together, he and his wife have more than 50 years’ experience in management and business. The entire 27-person staff stayed on with the new owners and Charest said they plan to hire several more.
“We are very fortunate,” he said of their employees.
Other changes the Charests are making include opening on Sundays beginning in August, around the start of the Olympics in Brazil. Gradually they hope to make it a seven-day-a-week operation with Monday hours.
“We think it will be better because we expect to bring in more people,” Charest said about the longer hours and expanded menu, which now includes barbecue and 16 beers on tap.
Bodkins said New Socials was very successful but he and his wife were always interested in a restaurant serving Latin food, which is why they opened Revolution Cantina.
“We wanted to find a partner or sell it outright,” Bodkins said about New Socials.
