Restaurant owner Joe Abston’s investments in downtown eateries have boosted the area’s “hot spot” factor / Photo by Michael Spooneybarger

Joe Abston always has been an entrepreneur, even as a 7-year-old at Navy Point Elementary.

“When I was in second grade, I started selling cinnamon toothpicks on the school bus,” said Abston, the now 40-year-old restaurateur behind Hopjacks, the Tin Cow and Pot Roast & Pinot.

Abston's entrepreneurial spirit — and the 245 jobs he has created through his three restaurants — has improved the quality of life by adding to the vibrancy of downtown Pensacola. Research shows a thriving downtown is crucial to the economic development of a city.

The sense of finding a niche in the market and taking advantage of it has been part of Abston's makeup since childhood. As he entered middle school, he found a way to monetize a holiday tradition and create a double profit.

“I would go around to houses and offer to clean the mistletoe out of the trees for people for money,” he said. “Then, I would take the mistletoe I collected to school and sell it. I used to get in trouble for that.”

His early achievement has developed into adult success. He is the owner/partner in three popular restaurants downtown Pensacola restaurants: Hopjacks Pizza Kitchen & Taproom, The Tin Cow and Pot Roast & Pinot.

But it took the long way around to get Abston back to Pensacola.

“I was a part of the second graduating class of the Pensacola Junior College (now Pensacola State College) Culinary Arts Program,” he said. “In 1999, I moved to the Pacific Islands for a couple of years, then to Johnson and Wales University in Charleston, on to South Florida for a job with Ritz-Carlton hotels.”

From South Florida, he transferred to Philadelphia, working and learning from other chefs. He stayed for three years.

“The Ritz was where I really cut my teeth as a chef,” he said. “I worked for some high-end restaurants, but eventually I got burned out and realized I wanted something different.”

Coming back to Pensacola

Abston left cooking behind temporarily and began working as a general manager for Starbucks in Philadelphia. He came home to Pensacola in 2006.

“I was still working for Starbucks and opened 10 stores for them all along the Gulf Coast,” he said.

In 2008, while walking in downtown Pensacola, Abston noticed something about the area that sparked an idea for his first restaurant.

“I realized there was no late-night food option that didn’t ask you to ‘please drive around,’” he said. “And at that time, craft beer was absolutely nonexistent.”

Abston became convinced he could change that. He started looking for a place to open his new restaurant, after a false start with a location on Government Street across from Seville Quarter, Abston found the spot he wanted in the what were then empty storefronts on Palafox Street.

“I realized I could just put it down there,” he said. “There was a certain naivety, but by that time I wasn’t afraid. I had failed so many times that I knew it was just a part of what happens in life.”

Hopjacks on Palafox Street in downtown Pensacola

The food side of the business was set: pizza, but Abston met resistance on the craft beer idea.

“When I said that I was going to open with 36 taps, the beer people said I was insane and that I would never be able to sell that much beer,” he said.

“I remember having to convince (beer distributor) Goldring to bring Pabst Blue Ribbon in kegs up this far,” Abston said. “They said, ‘We don’t bring them this far. We stop in Panama City.’”

“I said, ‘Bring them. I promise you they will sell,’” he said.

And sell they did. Hopjacks first six months of business was phenomenal.

“I can remember looking at our sales projections and at six months, we had made what we had projected for the entire year,” Abston said. “It was crazy. I realized we had really touched a nerve. It was a perfect storm.”

The success spawned another Hopjacks location on Nine Mile Road in December of 2011.

Burger heaven

As Hopjacks proved to be a success for Pensacola and Palafox Street began to be revitalized, Abston saw another opportunity – one suggested by some of his customers.

“People were always asking us to put a burger on Hopjacks’ menu,” he said. “I started toying with the idea. Mike Weeks and I had always talked about opening something together.”

That time time came just after New Year's Day in 2012.

The Tin Cow with swiss cheese, arugula and garlic aioli on a brioche bun. Served with bacon infused potato chips. Photo credit: Traci Hart and Emily Mitchell

“I noticed that the building that housed the restaurant Artissimo! had a for rent sign in the window,” he said. “They had just closed the night before on New Year’s Eve. I called Mike at 8 a.m. and said, ‘It’s now or never.”

Weeks would become Abston’s partner in The Tin Cow – his build-your-own burger and “spiked” milkshake joint. While the restaurant became a success, it didn’t start out that way.

“When we opened in May, I thought I had all the kinks worked out,” he said. “I had planned for people to come to the counter and order and then have runners to bring the food out to their tables.”

But the system didn’t go quite as planned.

“Opening day was a nightmare,” Abston said. “It wasn’t working. After a few hours, we just closed the doors.”

Abston scrambled and started changing the restaurant’s operations.

“The next day, I started hiring a lot of servers,” he said. “I made sure everyone understood the concept.”

After that shaky start, the Tin Cow found its own success.

“It took a while for people to really understand that we’re not just your ordinary burger joint,” he said. “But once they did, it has done very well.”

Pot Roast & Pinot

His girlfriend, Aimee Wilson, played a key part in Abston's next venture when she moved from California to Pensacola two years ago.

“She had always participated on the side, helping in all the restaurants," Abston said. "When she got to Pensacola, she wanted to really become immersed in the moving and shaking that was going on.”

A phone call fro Michael Carro, who had helped Abston lease the Tin Cow, led to the opening of Pot Roast & Pinot. Carro said the owners of the former Seville Diner on Cervantes Street were getting "very aggressive in the pricing,” he he encouraged Abston to look at the property.

As soon as he laid eyes on it, the ideas started flowing.

“Aimee and I went to look at the building and when we drove up, even before I got out of the car, the concept just came to me. I just started writing stuff down,” Abston said. “Hopjacks and the Tin Cow took a lot of thinking – this was just instant.”

Abston wanted to take the space, already designed as a diner, and flip it on its head into something more upscale.

“Deviled eggs, pot roast, meatloaf, Frito-chili pie. The concept, the look, the design. It all just poured out of me,” he said.

Nothing like the concept had been seen before in Pensacola. These deviled eggs come with lobster claw and pork belly as ingredients. The Frito-chilli pie is just like mom used to make with corn chips, but with artisan beef and bean chili and tickler cheddar.

“Aimee owns Pot Roast & Pinot and it has also done well for us,” Abston said.

The next frontier

Abston now is tackling a new venture, Edible Invaders, which will turn invasive species into a product restaurants will use and serve.

“It will go to restaurants first, but we hope to roll it out wider later,” Abston said.

Abston and his partners are targeting three non-native species that are causing ecosystem problems: the Asian carp, the flathead catfish and the lionfish.

Our first product will be a smoked lionfish dip,” Abston said. “We’ve already gotten verbal commitments from several restaurant and hotel groups and are in talks with a broad line distributor to get out wider.”

The new business is based on an innovation that Abston’s group has come up with to change the processing of these invasive species.

“Previously, you had to get a good size fish to produce filets that you could sell,” Abston said. “We’ve refined the process so that we can now make much smaller fish viable.”

Abston says that the research team on the project are some of the best in the world.

“The people who have worked on this are amazing,” Abston said. “This is an absolute game-changer for the coasts affected.”

The process and product has been endorsed by the Coastwatch Alliance, who are dedicated to stopping the lionfish invasion of the Gulf of Mexico, but they aren’t the only people supporting the product.

“We did our beta taste testing at the recent Lionfish Removal and Awareness Day here in Pensacola,” Abston said. “And the results were very positive.”

Stemming the tide of invasive species is just one way the company is helping the environment.

“We’re going to donate 25 percent of all proceeds to reef building and maintenance,” Abston said. “We’ve been successful and we want to give back.”

Unlike a lot of successful chefs who own restaurants, you can often still find Abston at Hopjacks and the Tin Cow working in the kitchen.

“Someone said that the better you get at something, the less you do of it,” he said. “My brain is in all of my restaurants everyday, so I need to be there too – to answer questions and offer help, not just for the customers, but for my employees as well.”

Abston thinks that the bond with his 245 employees is crucial to his success.

“As an entrepreneur, I’ve discovered that you have to learn your craft and know what you are and aren’t good at it,” he said. “And for those things you aren’t good at, you have to surround yourself with people who are smarter and better at those things.”

Building that evolving team has been and always will be his priority.

“I’m a people collector,” Abston said. “I always look for people who are good at what they do now, but will be even better later, for our organization."