You might call them the saviors of flavors.
Through a lot of planning and a bit of elbow grease, Coreen Haydock and Steve Sego have spent the better part of the last year making sure the Port Orchard Public Market didn’t lose its restaurant.
Formerly known as The Central Dock, it’s now called The Dock Bar & Eatery, and the pair has launched a rebranding of the restaurant, complete with a new logo and a revised menu.
But don’t worry, the old favorites — including The Dock’s Famous Seafood Chowder and the seafood baskets — aren’t going anywhere.
“We just wanted to bring some new life to this place,” Haydock, a former executive director of the Port Orchard Chamber of Commerce, said. “We thought about a new name and threw around a lot of ideas. But we settled on The Dock.”
According to Sego, it was while they were discussing names that Port Orchard Mayor Robert Putaansuu said ‘How about The Dock?’ and it stuck.
“It’s easy to say and it conveys what we want it to,” he said. “We wanted something that makes it a social house.”
It was Sept. 2, 2015, when Sego and Haddock took over management of the restaurant. The owner was going to close it and they didn’t want to see that happen right before several special celebrations in town, including the city’s 125th anniversary.
“We just felt it would be terrible not to have a restaurant in the market,” Haydock said. “There was a good possibility that without a restaurant, the entire market would close down. So we came up with a plan to save it.”
They enlisted the help of Drew MacEwen, 35th District state representative, who is a seasoned investor in restaurants. He owns Smoking Mo’s in Shelton and the Corner Coffee and Cafe in Bremerton.
“He told us that the only way he’d get involved was if we’d stay onboard,” Sego said. “So we made a commitment and, now a year later, we’re a profitable business.”
Haddock said both she and Sego had some restaurant experience from their high-school days. Because they owned other businesses, they thought, “We can do this restaurant thing,” she said.
“We started with a steep mountain to climb,” Sego said. “But we were willing to put out the capital needed.”
And, in fact, in January 2016 they began negotiating with the owner to purchase the restaurant. The sale was completed in April.
“At the time we started all of this, everybody looked at us like we were crazy,” Haydock said. “But this is the hub of the market and we just knew we couldn’t lose it.”
The first few months were relatively busy, but as tourism, and summer and fall events began to dissipate, the restaurant’s business dropped off. Sego and Haydock, however, kept it going throughout the winter and by spring, business began to increase.
The past few months, they have been in the black. They’ve doubled the profits from last year at this time.
“It’s always hard in the winter months,” Haydock said. “But we offer reasons for people to come down here to eat, like great food and beverages. And kids eat free on Wednesday nights.”
They recently obtained their state liquor license and are serving drinks — martinis and gin and tonics, for example.
“That took us three and a half months,” Sego said. “But since just last week we’ve been able to serve hard liquor.”
Because they added liquor to the restaurant, they had to rebuild a bar behind the counter. That triggered other remodeling.
Haydock and Sego added a wall made of glass windows to separate the restaurant from the entry at the back of the market.
They painted one wall a bright blue and plan to hang historic photographs on it. They added more seating space and will soon be moving the ropes that separate the restaurant from the rest of the market’s seating.
“We want it to be more open and less cramped,” Haydock said. “The changes were so important to us that we came in at night, after hours and did the remodeling and the painting.”
The restaurant now has seven full-time employees, and they are looking to hire more. They’ve gone from being open five days a week to seven. The restaurant stays open until 8 p.m. weekdays and Sunday, and 9 p.m. or later on Fridays and Saturdays.
“And, our employees know that if someone walks in at five minutes to eight, they will take their order and serve them,” Sego said. “We’re here for our customers.”One customer favorite on the revised menu is the open-face crab and shrimp sandwich. The strawberry salad is popular and they’ve added crab cakes.“Our standby is the French dip,” Sego said. “And don’t forget our chowder. People say it’s the best in Kitsap County.”
The trifecta of chowders, as it is called — shrimp, clams and cod — has won awards, too.
Other menu items include Dock burgers at $9, and the Chef’s Mac-n-Cheese of the Week. It’s described as “Chef Thomas gets creative — made from scratch. It’s a creamy cheese and mac with a different twist every week.”
The Dock has also upgraded its kids menu to include some healthy choices, Haydock said. Kids meals are $6 and include the old favorite: grilled cheese and “Chicken Little Strips.” The restaurant encourages family dining.
Seafood tacos are $11 and the crab cakes are $14. And their fries are hand-cut.
“We go through hundreds and hundreds of pounds of potatoes every week,” Sego said.
This isn’t the first time Haydock and Sego have been in business together. They knew each other in high school at Central Kitsap High and they commuted together to the University of Washington.
After that, their paths went different directions, until about six years ago when Sego returned to Port Orchard and met up again with Haydock, who was recently widowed.
They operate Waterman Mitigation Partners, a wetlands mitigation company with environmental restoration expertise that does business in many places, including Alaska.
Sego and Haydock say they’ll operate the restaurant as long as they can, but hope to eventually find a buyer whose “dream it is to be in the restaurant business,” she said.
“We’re not in the business (The Dock) to make money,” she said.
“We want to make sure it’s profitable and stable and that it will be here for a long, long time. And then we’ll be ready to pass it along to someone else.”
