Friday afternoon, we updated the news about the sudden departure of Swinery founder Gabriel Claycamp, after Christopher Boffoli talked with him. Subsequently, Christopher interviewed the man who’d been Claycamp’s partner – James Dillon. For those following the Swinery saga, here’s what he has to say.
Story and photo by Christopher Boffoli
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
James Dillon, The Swinery‘s “angel investor,” says that, since its founder Gabriel Claycamp announced his departure, he has stepped in “to ensure the success of the Swinery’s mission of continuing to provide high-quality, sustainably sourced products to the community.”
Dillon says right off the top that, for customers, nothing about the business will change. The Swinery is NOT closing (as is reiterated in a message today on one of its websites). Claycamp has indeed left and he says he has complete confidence in the capabilities of the staff they have in place. Their product lines and hours will remain the same.
Claycamp echoed some of Dillon’s sentiments earlier when he said that Swinery staff Joey, Garrett, and Amie are “very capable and ready to step up.” Dillon told me that he could foresee them becoming partners in the business.
Dillon identifies himself as a foodie from a family with many generation of serious food lovers. His background is not in the food business at all, but instead, as a commercial developer. He founded Dillon Design and Construction, which has revitalized and repurposed numerous commercial buildings in SODO (here’s an article about some of his work).
Dillon told me that he met Claycamp years ago when he was a student at the Culinary Communion. Upon reflection, he says now that he did not know the extent of Claycamp’s troubles when he decided to go into business with him. “He brought with him his entire debt package. He did not disclose the full extent of his debt and it has been devastating to the business. Every time someone comes in the door and says ‘Gabriel Claycamp owes me and I want some of it.’ Gabriel felt he had to give them something,” says Dillon. He says that in just under a year since the Swinery opened, his investment in the butcher shop has “wiped out the profits of about four other businesses of mine.”
“I did not think that Gabriel would mismanage an opportunity,” he says, “I expected that he had learned enough from his prior experiences.”
Dillon scoffed at Claycamp’s assertions that he had to leave simply to be able to support his family, recounting the hundreds of thousands of dollars he poured into the Swinery. Dillon also claims to have taken on the burdens of Claycamp’s significant Culinary Communion debts, in addition to helping to pay Claycamp’s rent and funding personal loans for him.
Dillon says, “Think about it. You’re in the driver’s seat of a beautiful car. And you wreck it. And you say to the guy that built the car, If you’d made it a little uglier or a little slower car I wouldn’t have wrecked it. I didn’t operate this business. He did. The real question is, how come Gabriel didn’t make a living here? What did he do wrong that prevented him from making money?” Dillon says that if Claycamp was not making enough money that he should have assumed a role as an executive chef at the Swinery and taken another job at a restaurant at night. “Instead he was spending time down at the cafe saying woe is me,” he says. Dillon and other past Swinery employees suggest that Claycamp was absent enough that it was a significant factor in his failure there, as he simply was not spending enough time running his business. Dillon adds, “I don’t know what he was doing. He was not here. He wasn’t at the job so why should he get a check if he wasn’t at the job?”
“This building was a mistake too,” admits Dillon. “The landlord did give us a break on the rent for a certain number of months. But the place was falling down and was really considered a teardown by its owner.” Still, Dillon is proud of the significant amount of construction elements his design team has added to the property which were re-purposed from previous buildings. “It goes along with our mission of sustainability,” he added.
The Swinery’s employees said on Friday that they saw Claycamp’s departure as a positive development that would probably be ultimately good for the business. When I spoke to Claycamp earlier in the day he conveyed some of the acrimonious conversations he and Dillon had exchanged in the waning days of his tenure there. However, Claycamp also offered a conciliatory tone, saying that he was willing to work with the staff as a consultant to ease the transition, especially with some aspects of the business which the remaining staff may not be familiar with. Dillon says that he might be amenable to that, providing that he can get a “clean title to the business.” (According to Claycamp, Dillon was unable to get the bank to sign over the business to him as a sole proprietor without Claycamp being present.)
Dillon has suggested that a series of e-mails from Claycamp make him concerned that the process might be complicated, with Claycamp expecting further financial compensation for stepping away. “Gabriel thinks he has created a tremendous amount of value here. But he has also created a tremendous amount of negativity,” says Dillon, “and he negates the true cost of his management style and business screwups and how they have actually contributed to the economic deterioration of a new business.”
Dillon says that he hopes that Claycamp will divest himself of the Swinery so that a very capable and committed team can move forward to build a business, at last unencumbered by Claycamp’s past failures. “We have just brought in (Friday) what I think is one of the best pieces of Thundering Hooves beef that we’ve ever had,” he says. “Claycamp burned a lot of bridges with purveyors but I hope they’ll continue to do business with us.”
(Again, Claycamp’s comments were part of our original story Friday afternoon – see it here.)
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