From single Las Vegas location, Catfish Alley angles to become national chain

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

Actually, it was the plans -- and dreams -- of several people that led to the opening of a Southern-style restaurant at the Hawaiian Marketplace on the Strip, and a strategy to open 300 restaurants across the country in the next five years.

Ken Browder, an Army veteran and former hotel-casino valet, had dreamed of seeing his restaurant, Catfish Alley, become a franchise operation.

Rod Gaines, who retired in 2005 from JP Morgan Chase, was looking for something to keep him busy. Or busier.

And LaMonte McLemore, former member of The 5th Dimension and longtime Motown photographer, had been trying for 50 years to get his friends and family together on a joint investment project.

But the journey to Catfish Alley would be a peripatetic one.

Browder and his wife, Ruth, who had met while working in a local casino, opened the original Catfish Alley on East Flamingo Road in 2006.

"Somehow he got this entrepreneurship bug from his father, and wore me down," said Ruth Browder, a Las Vegas native. "I'm glad that he did."

The restaurant quickly gained a loyal following.

Ken Browder, a native of Texas, said catfish was a natural choice for him.

"If we're not eating chicken, we're eating catfish," he said of his fellow Texans.

But when he moved to Las Vegas in 1997, he couldn't find catfish in a supermarket. A catfish restaurant, he thought, would fill a need. Eventually, he started to see it in the markets. Then he saw it selling out in the markets.

"I knew it was time," he said.

"He had to find his partner," said Ruth, who runs the front of the house while he runs the back.

The Browders are clear that what they serve isn't soul food, which includes smothered meats and dishes such as neck bones and ham hocks.

Instead, the catfish is coated in a light cornmeal breading. Browder decided to add chicken to the menu, so that if someone who came in for catfish brought in someone who didn't like it, they'd have an option. And, being from Texas, he had to feature chicken-fried steak and brisket. Then there were the sides such as fried green beans and fried creamed corn and macaroni and cheese nuggets.

Clarence Collins, of Little Anthony and the Imperials, remembers that McLemore told him Catfish Alley was a great place to eat. So he went there.

"Then we ordered three boxes to go," Collins said. "That's how good it was."

McLemore had frequented another catfish restaurant -- 40 years ago, he tried unsuccessfully to convince the owner to open on the Strip, he recalled -- but he liked Catfish Alley better.

But after three years, Ruth said, the Browders "needed to downsize, relocate and regroup." Their restaurant was bigger, the rent more expensive, than they needed. It was in an aging building with frequent heating and cooling problems. They found a new location, at Silverado Ranch Boulevard and Bermuda Road, in a newer building with lower rent. And in their typical low-key way, they closed down on East Flamingo without fanfare and without telling their customers -- which was a rude awakening for McLemore.

"I drove 20 miles, and it was closed," he said.

One day, though, a member of his circle discovered that Catfish Alley lived on, just in a new location.

"We cussed them out," McLemore remembered with a laugh. "We said, 'You've got to open on the Strip.' We were just jiving."

They started frequenting the new location -- "Most of them live out in that area," Ruth said -- and got even more friendly with the Browders. One night Ken Browder was with a group at Gaines' house, playing tunk, which Browder describes as "a light version of poker." Over the game, there was plenty of conversation. Browder recalled Gaines asking, "Where do you want to go with this thing?" Franchising, Browder told him, was his dream.

"Maybe we can make this possible -- get behind it and push it to another level," was the response.

A Strip location was the initial goal. Browder found a place, Gaines said, well before they were ready. McLemore began negotiating the rent, eventually getting it to one-third of what it had been two years before. But they needed money; the new Catfish Alley wasn't enough collateral to secure the rent, and the landlord wanted to see $80,000 in assets. He gave McLemore a deadline of a few days later at 10 a.m.

"I showed up with $100,000 by 9 a.m.," McLemore recalled.

The landlord didn't feel good about the numbers and asked McLemore to return with more proof and a clear indication of the restaurant's mission.

"By the next week, I had $150,000 and a menu," McLemore said. "The guy looked at me."

And Restaurant Investment USA, LLC, a two-restaurant partnership, was on its way, on the strength of $245,000 raised in less than 60 days.

McLemore remembered going to a local attorney to have business papers drawn up. The attorney asked the name of the attorney who had handled the paperwork for the investors. What paperwork, McLemore wanted to know.

"You want to come work for me?" the lawyer quipped.

McLemore said he invested his own money and his wife's and daughter's, because he wanted to take as much risk as his friends were. Gaines calls that "love capital -- writing checks on trust."

"We've brought equity capital to the table, which allows you to do all these things without debt," he said.

Gaines, who had not only years of corporate experience but also had the idea for the famous Georgia Brown's in Washington, D.C., said he eventually used LegalZoom to form the company.

"We're moving from mom-and-pop to corporate," Gaines said. "I'm using all the things I was taught over the last 40-some years."

Right now, Gaines said, there are 40 investors. Besides the core group of musicians, they include actor Richard Roundtree, a 27-year-old millionaire, a minister affiliated with the National Baptist Convention (which has 8 million members, Gaines noted) and a former assistant secretary of the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. Currently, he said, someone is interested in investing $1 million.

Bubba Knight, a member of Gladys Knight and the Pips, is one of the core investors. Knight said he signed up when he "heard that they were trying to expand, and have visibility on the Strip. With a majority of African-Americans involved, I wanted to be a part of it."

The franchising process hasn't started yet, Gaines said, because he wanted to be sure the base product was solid. (The three feature menu items, he said, are catfish, Texas Crunch Chicken and Southern dipped shrimp, along with many more choices.) That process will begin in about 90 days, he said, and he hopes to have 10 restaurants in operation by April 2013. He plans to focus on the top 10 markets, starting in Las Vegas and then proceeding to Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland and points east.

A "secondary motive," he said, is to create jobs and, even more importantly, owner-operators.

Knight noted that the Hawaiian Marketplace location has become somewhat of a gathering place. They periodically have friends -- including Marilyn McCoo, McLemore's former 5th Dimension bandmate -- do autograph sessions.

"You never know who's going to be here," Gaines said.

"It's a meeting place for entertainers, actors and entrepreneurs," Knight said.

Last week, two curators from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., were in the restaurant, meeting with many of the Catfish Alley investors.

"I knew this would be the perfect place to get them together," Knight said.

And it was for a reason larger than catfish, whether we're talking about two restaurants or 300. The topic of the meeting: the African-American history museum at the Smithsonian, for which ground will be broken in a few weeks.

"Way after we're gone, our story will live on," Knight said. "That's very important."

Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.