Morning Glory

Sue and Mark Tansey are partners in both business and life.

Mark Tansey didn’t exactly plan his path into the culinary world.

“My brother kind of pushed me into the business,” he recalled. “My mother died when I was 15, and I had to cook at home. I wanted to go to college, and he goes, ‘why don’t you go to cooking school?’ So I ended up going to Johnson & Wales.”

In addition to completing that two-year program, Tansey worked at the Monte Carlo in West Springfield, and later at Hillbrook House in Westfield, then Springfield Country Club. The first two of those establishments are long gone, but his next venture — Partners Restaurant & Catering in Agawam — is still going strong, more than 40 years later.

“A woman came to me and said, ‘I have this little breakfast-lunch place in Agawam, Mark, if you want to think about it,’” he recalled. That was 1984, and Partners had been open just a couple of years when its then-owner wanted to unload it. Tansey, then just 24 years old, liked what he saw, secured a $45,000 loan from Westbank, and started crafting a plan, both culinary and financial.

“I had to learn how to write the financials, how to figure out, ‘well, if I have one dishwasher and a cook and a server, how much do I need?’ But then I realized, for the first couple of years, I was the dishwasher and the cook.”

His first marriage would end in those early years, and he wound up bonding with his current wife (and business partner) of 33 years, Sue, over food; her family owned Angy’s Tortellini at the time, and she ran a small catering business.

And now, they’re celebrating four decades running a restaurant and catering business that has outlasted challenges ranging from a devastating fire in 2014 to the COVID-19 pandemic (more on both later), emerging from it all with a loyal clientele, about 50 employees, and even a succession plan (the Tanseys’ daughter, Siena, is deeply involved in the business).

In short, there’s plenty to celebrate, which they did on Nov. 22 with an admittedly late 40th anniversary event (the actual milestone was last year) at the restaurant, where they expected about 400 people to show up.

“We have a lot of repeat business, and we have people that say, ‘I can’t wait until they put out those specials because I want to see what I’m going to have this weekend.’”

The clientele has been multi-generational, Sue said, but so has the staff.

“We’ve had multiple third-generation family members working for us. We’ve had the mother, then their daughter, and now the granddaughter working for us — I’d say a good five families like that. It’s so cool.”

Both Tanseys attribute much of the restaurant’s success to its staff. In the early days, Sue said, “if we came home on a Sunday and we were over $1,000, we’d be like, ‘oh my God.’ Now, we serve 400, 500 people on a Sunday.” And they appreciate those putting in all the work to make that happen.

“Everybody makes fair money; I pay them well. I don’t chintz around. And if we do have a great week, they get extra,” Mark said. “How is that money going to enhance my life? I could use it, but in the long run, by giving everybody 50 bucks, it works out better, because they’re going to stay, we have less turnover, less training. I didn’t know that in the first five years of business, but after a while, we did.”

The result is clear in the waitstaff’s hustle and demeanor, he added. “That’s how we want it. I want people to feel fun and not have a grumpy person greeting them.”

Serving Up Challenges

Sept. 3, 2014 was not one of those fun days.

That’s the night the Tanseys were summoned to the restaurant, which had suffered a major electrical fire caused by degraded conduits across the street.

“If you looked in the window, you wouldn’t think we had a fire, but it was all electrical damage; everything was permeated with smoke,” Sue said. “They ended up having to take the building down.”

Thankfully, an insurance policy allowed them to operate at another spot, and they opened Partners at the Cup on Route 20 in West Springfield the following June. Before that, however, “we still had catering to do,” Mark said. “Because I had a rapport with Six Flags, they had a kitchen out in the back. It was winter, and they weren’t using their stoves and ovens, and they didn’t charge us at all.”

First Baptist Church of Agawam also allowed the couple to cater from there, so they paid rent to the church to do that for a while. “We had people come out of the woodwork to help us rebuild,” Mark said.

Partners reopened in December 2015, and the couple ran both locations until 2020, when the Cup closed for good.

As difficult as the fire was, however, COVID may have been worse. “I think I still have PTSD,” Sue told BusinessWest. “It was difficult to figure out the PPP, but we rallied, and we came up with menus. We had family dinners. We did takeout. We had a few employees that weren’t afraid, and we ran a skeleton crew.”

That was when Siena came home from Boston, where she had she studied hospitality and was working at the Omni Parker House until it closed, and started a new career at Partners.

“We also fed our employees; we would have employee dinners.” Sue recalled. “It was very hard work. We did fish and chips Friday night, and people would pre-order. We had a little side window that worked out perfectly, so people didn’t have to come in.

“But every Monday, we waited for [then-Gov.] Charlie Baker to drop another hammer. Every Monday, there was another restriction on us. It was awful. But then we were able to open outside, and we put up a big tent. Eventually, we ended up coming back inside, though we had to go from 80 seats down to 40, with barriers between them. But we still had our loyal employees.”

“Thank God for them,” Mark quickly added. “Especially during COVID. We were not surprised, but taken aback by how much support we got.”

It’s not just the restaurant that has succeeded, but a catering business that has taken many forms and operated in many settings over the decades, and now includes an event space that opened two years ago right on the Partners property, which can accommodate parties of more than 400 people.

On both sides of the business, Mark said, they use as much locally sourced, fresh food as possible, from produce to breads — no canned vegetables anywhere. And patrons look forward to the ever-changing specials board, which benefits not only their taste buds, but the bottom line.

“You can get bacon and eggs anywhere at $6, $7, $8. But I want to get a higher check average because I have a good payroll,” he explained. “So I’ll try to do dinner entrees for breakfast specials. Like, this weekend we have beef brisket. And now, instead of getting steak and eggs for $14.95, you can get smoked beef brisket for $16.95.

“We have a lot of repeat business,” he added, “and we have people that say, ‘I can’t wait until they put out those specials because I want to see what I’m going to have this weekend.’”

Off the Air

Mark has taken his passion for cooking to the airwaves in past decades, hosting a local cooking TV show, Continental Cuisine, and a talk radio show, The Latest Dish, as well as participating in cooking demos and seminars for the Big E, Angy’s Tortellini, Big Y Foods, and various clubs and organizations.

“At that time, people wanted quick meals they could make at home,” he told BusinessWest. “People can go to a restaurant and get chicken parm; I would show them how to do a chicken parm or something simple. Speed scratch cooking — that’s kind of what I did. And then I did some more upscale stuff, because I have some background in that too. But I wanted the people to know that you can do this at home.”

Sue thinks her husband could have become nationally known.

“Food Network was just starting to come out, Emeril was getting popular, and I remember thinking I should send in a tape for Mark,” she said. “And I never did it.”

“I could have been famous,” he said, then flashed a warm smile at his partner. “But look at our life.”