Doug Holiday said his 25 years in the restaurant business helped him learn the one important point every city commissioner should know: Serve your customers or find a new job.

“You have to talk to people, listen to people and listen to their feedback and react accordingly,” Holiday said. “That is the service industry. You can’t make decisions based on what you feel. You have to make decisions based on what the public feels. I do that all the time.”

Holiday is one of nine candidates vying for three at-large seats on the Lawrence City Commission.

Holiday is a co-owner of Bigg’s BBQ, a South Iowa Street bar and grill that opened late last year. A small placard advertising the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce’s “Start Here” buy-local campaign sits in the center of every table.

Holiday said it was a good campaign, which is why he was dismayed about two months ago when he saw the city was buying police cars and other vehicles from a Shawnee Mission dealership.

“That was the last straw for me,” Holiday said. “I feel like we need to practice what we preach.”

City commissioners routinely buy vehicles as part of a regional purchasing contract in an effort to have more buying power. Lately, the lowest bids frequently have come from Kansas City area dealerships.

Holiday came to Lawrence in 2000 as the general manager of the Hereford House. But the longtime Overland Park resident was already familiar with the city. He received his degree in personnel administration from Kansas University, where he has a connection to an iconic student hangout.

His grandparents, Jim and Virginia Large, were the founders of The Wagon Wheel Cafe, better known as the Wheel, a watering hole for generations of KU students. Holiday stops short of saying that his visits to the Wheel led him to the restaurant business, but he said he’s thankful for whatever did.

“I really do enjoy it,” said Holiday, who worked his way through college as a restaurant night manager. “It’s very rewarding because it is one of the few jobs where you can have immediate gratification.”

But the business is about more than putting a plate of food in front of someone, he said. It wouldn’t be uncommon to find Holiday spending part of his day poring over financial records looking for a way to save a few cents on napkins or some other item that an outsider may find trivial. But in the restaurant business, where profit margins are razor thin, there are very few trivial items, which he said was a good background for a city commissioner.

“Something in the restaurant business that you have to look at all the time is cost control and how to control the bottom line,” Holiday said. “I think more of that needs to happen at City Hall.”

Holiday also said:

Doug Holiday, city commission candidate, to chat Thursday More in Election 2005

• He supports the right of citizens to start a petition to overturn the current city smoking ban. Holiday, a nonsmoker, said he would recommend a system that would allow a business to use an air-handling system to accommodate smokers. “I’m not in favor of a city dictating how a privately owned business should operate.”
• He supports creating new programs that would provide incentives for people to rehabilitate homes in older neighborhoods to encourage more homeowners to move back into the areas.
• The City Commission needs to become more focused on local issues. “I think the City Commission needs to focus on the basics and not worry about issues like the Patriot Act and that sort of thing. We need to worry about city issues. We need to concentrate on our streets, our quality of life, those type of issues.”
• The city needs to reduce what he calls a “bit of a bureaucratic nightmare” that businesses must go through to open in Lawrence. He was critical of a debate in 2000 over whether American Eagle Outfitters paid high enough wages to justify a tax abatement from the city. “If somebody is willing to make that sort of investment, they probably have done their homework to know what they’ll have to do to attract employees. I think the marketplace would work pretty well in a case like that. It has for 200 years.”