By Daniel Nash | The Courier-Herald

Seemingly flouting a soft economy, the owners of Rock Solid Restaurants opened a new eatery in August, with pending plans to open two more locations next year.

The restaurant, Hop Jack’s, is the company’s first foray into developing a brand of its own. Rock Solid Restaurants began business in 2004 by purchasing franchises of The Rock Wood Fired Pizza. They own two locations in Lacey and Puyallup.

Rock Solid owners Mark Eggen and Greg Troger have over 40 years of combined experience in the restaurant business.

“I’ve never really done anything else,” said Eggen, whose first job was as a busboy during high school.

They first met in the late 1980s while working for Red Robin. Eggen and Troger ended their careers with the company as vice president of franchise operations and northwest training manager, respectively.

“He and I had talked about doing something like this for a long time,” Eggen said. “There wasn’t much left to do with The Rock, locally. (With Hop Jack’s) we were trying to do something smaller, not necessarily a tavern, but a small place where all types of people can enjoy themselves.”

The location opened in Bonney Lake alongside state Route 410. It has done well in its first two months, operating at the higher end of initial performance expectations, Eggen said.

The name derives from the hop jacks of the early 20th century, farmers who would harvest the raw materials for beer. A mural on the west-facing wall depicts a group of them at work on a crop, standing on stilts to reach the tops of the plants.

“They’re the representation of the everyman we want to attract, hard-working guys who also know how to play hard,” Eggen said.

Most of the business is in the bar, which serves mass-produced beers on a sliding scale of sophistication from best-selling Coors to Mac and Jacks and Indian Pale Ale.

The formula is simple: take familiar restaurant offerings and modify them into something unique to the brand. Fried calamari appetizers are replaced by scallops to appeal to broader tastes. Instead of a sesame seed bun, burgers are packaged in a corn meal split roll that does not crumble under messier sauces. Potato chips are hand-sliced and cooked on site.

The atmosphere itself is carefully crafted as well, designed to cultivate a family atmosphere without neglecting adults, Eggen said.

“Somewhere along the way in the restaurant business, family-friendly turned into kid-friendly,” he said. “We’re returning to family-friendly. Kids can still enjoy it, but we wanted to give it touches that will allow the rest of the family to enjoy it too.”

As an example, Eggen demonstrated a birthday ritual Hop Jack’s team members call “the wishing paper.” Instead of a throng of servers surrounding a table and singing some variation of Happy Birthday, a single server will bring out a square of confetti paper and roll it into a column on the table. The celebrating customer is asked to make a wish and the server sets the paper on fire. If it floats above their heads, the wish will come true.

Eggen and Troger meet on location every morning to discuss what is and isn’t working, what new items could introduce and what might be retired from the menu. They will introduce breakfast items in October.

They are glad to have been able to open and operate smoothly despite the economic crisis, Eggen said.

“The banks have money, but it’s not free money,” he said. “I think the banks saw our resumes and saw our level of experience, and they had faith in our brand.

“Any loan request for a business is going to have to have a good foundation and high likelihood of success. Even in a bad economy, if a service has a want – a want, not necessarily even a need – there will be a market for it.”

Pending the success of the Bonney Lake location, the banks even agreed to fund two more locations in Lacey and Maple Valley. Depending on negotiations with landowners, one is on track for June or July 2010 and, if they’re lucky, the second will open in fall 2010.

Rock Solid Restaurants may consider developing Hop Jack’s into its own franchise in the unforeseeable future, but for now Eggen and Troger will concentrate on improving and perfecting their current model.