SOUTH-CENTRAL : Rebuilt Diner Opens With a New Spirit

Joe Wilson’s dream of owning a family-style restaurant is coming true--again.

However, this time Wilson is better prepared to run Pop’s Place, the eatery he opened in 1989 that was destroyed in last year’s riots.

“I’m keeping better records now, and things seem to be picking up,” said Wilson, who spends nearly 10 hours each day at the restaurant at 4042 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Inside the restaurant, photos of the Wilsons standing amid the rubble of Pop’s Place hang on the walls. Although little has changed on the menu that offers breakfast, lunch and dinner (specialties such as meatloaf and chicken with dressing are $5.95), Wilson and his wife, Joyce, have taken a new approach to running the business.

“I had no insurance. I just couldn’t afford it,” Wilson said. “Now I keep records. I had never really kept records before, and it hurt me later when I went to apply for loans and the (Small Business Administration) turned me down twice.”

Sitting at a corner table, Wilson thumbed through a thin folder of charts and graphs--all part of a business plan he compiled while attending an 11-week course run by USC’s Community Enterprise Projects.

Wilson, 51, found out about the program after someone put him in contact with Debbie Esparza, director of the project that promotes entrepreneurship among South-Central residents. USC students, faculty and alumni have worked as mentors and consultants with at least 200 local businesses since the program started in June, 1991.

Among Wilson’s new business practices are paying for food items up front and keeping an eye on the restaurant’s month-to-month performance.

“The business school helped me with projections and to know that your business will go down and level off after you first open,” he said. “Also I know that once you get the food you pay for it instead of putting it on credit, because otherwise you might use the money for something else.”

Wilson said he thought of taking his business elsewhere but decided to stay after getting a $140,000 low-interest loan from Bank of America and enlisting the advice of Esparza and Ellis Gordon, senior vice president and chief credit officer of Founders National Bank.

“When I met (Wilson) I was struck that he had this spirit, that he was coming back into business,” Gordon said. “He didn’t know how he was going to do it but he knew he was coming back. Most people who had their businesses burned down didn’t come back.”

Wilson said he managed to survive financially with help from his brother, assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and unemployment benefits for nearly a year, until the restaurant reopened in April.

For now, Wilson is busy rebuilding a steady clientele and planning for next summer.

“What we’re doing is looking at volume and how many dinners can we sell. Because once we get someone in here, once they find out about us they’ll come back. We’re going to have long lines here.”

USC’s Community Enterprise Projects: (213) 743-1726.