With a large blade in hand, Ralph Bushey stood in a bar parking lot and sliced and trimmed a football-sized hunk of uncooked beef. The prep tables, food and spices that a couple of hours previously had been packed away in Bushey's white panel van were set up in a makeshift kitchen in front of Nathaniel's Pub on Exchange Boulevard for Thursday's regular Uncle Ralph's Steakout & BBQ.
Uncle Ralph's — a moving target of a steakhouse that has set up shop at numerous bars and restaurants since its founding more than a decade ago — has become something of a Rochester institution.
Multiple times a week, regardless of the weather, Bushey sets up the mobile restaurant outside area bars and churns out dinners that typically retail between $13 and $24.
"I'm sure there are better ways to make a living," said Bushey, 50, of Ontario, Wayne County. The small operation — Bushey and his son, Frank, are the only two full-time workers — has suffered in the recession.
Bushey declined to give revenue numbers, but said that while business once had been busy year-round, now it tapers off starting in September and remains slow through winter.
"It was a lot brisker before the downturn in the economy," Bushey said. Meanwhile, Bushey is trying to rebuild a sideline Uncle Ralph's business — barbecue sauces that were available from 1997 to 2007. Bushey reintroduced the sauce line last year.
The sauces are manufactured by Permac Enterprises Inc. of Bergen, Genesee County, and are available at numerous area grocery stores and retail outlets, including Wegmans, Skip's Market and Hegedorn's stores and through NYStyleDeli.com.
"He has a product people will drive from other towns for," said Mark Ippolito, general manager of The Comedy Club in Webster. Bushey started doing steakouts at the Empire Boulevard establishment once a week a year ago; a number of customers who had gone to the steakouts when the building housed the former Millennium Billiard Club had requested him, Ippolito said.
The Comedy Club added a second day a week earlier this fall. While most customers on those Wednesday and Sundays come for the steakout, The Comedy Club keeps its kitchen open, though the major benefit is from increased liquor sales on what had been slower days, Ippolito said.
"There might not be tablecloths, you might have a paper plate, but the selection and service of meat, there's no comparison," he said. Aside from The Comedy Club and Nathaniel's, the steakout's current lineup includes Monday nights at Paddy's Irish Pub on Latta Road in Greece.
Bushey started the steakouts in the early 1990s as a sideline business at a few local venues. Bushey went full time in 1997 after losing his metrology job with Bausch & Lomb Inc. a year earlier.
But he'd been barbecuing since his childhood and used to frequent barbecue joints around the city, such as Smitty's Birdland. "Just a fat man who liked to eat," he said.
Starting the steakouts required an investment of less than $2,000 — "a shoestring" with a pickup truck and used or makeshift grills left at restaurants and bars around town, Bushey said. (After having a number of the grills stolen, Bushey earlier this year switched to a long trailer that totes heavy metal grills to each site).
The costs of running the steakout business are sizable, Bushey said, with $1,500 to $2,000 worth of perishables a night loaded into the van in the form of steaks, scallops, shrimp, ribs and chicken breasts.
To clear a profit, Bushey said he typically has to do 70 meals in a night. "If I can do anything over 100, I've got a smile on my face," he said.
