Spanky’s Restaurant owner Mandy Boldt and cook Jeff Guyer stand in the newly renovated kitchen and cafe at the Tama Livestock Auction in early Aug. The eatery recently opened for breakfast and lunch five days a week (M-F) from 7-2 p.m. The Boldt’s move to regular hours in Tama comes as their restaurant and bar in Gladbrook was closed last month due to staffing shortages. Photo by Darvin Graham

One of Tama County’s most prolific restaurateurs is evolving their business after a challenging year.

Mandy Boldt, owner of Spanky’s Restaurant and Catering, recently announced plans for her business to shift regular dining hours from their restaurant and bar in downtown Gladbrook to the diner space within the Tama Livestock Auction facility in Tama.

Spanky’s opened in Gladbrook in 2016 and at the height of their business was employing up to 25 workers serving meals most days of the week.

When the pandemic hit last spring, they closed up for several weeks and moved to carry-out only as much of the state and nation were quarantined at home. Following loosened restrictions by the state government, Spanky’s reopened for dine-in service in June 2020.

Boldt said the community in Gladbrook stuck with them through 2020 and provided enough patronage to keep the lights on the grills hot.

The roof of the Tama Livestock Auction diner was nearly torn off in the 2020 derecho as Spanky’s staff were inside. After a lengthy rebuilding effort, the cafe is now rented by the Boldts and has reopened for regular breakfast and lunch hours in Tama. Contributed photo

However, as the year wore on, another, more persistent challenge began to emerge. As the Gladbrook business reopened, members of her staff gradually started to drop off.

“By Christmas it got to the point where if it wasn’t me and my sons and husband working pretty much every weekend, we didn’t have enough staff,” Boldt said.

Soon after the holidays last winter, the business lost another cook.

Boldt said the staff that have moved on from her business have done so for a variety of reasons and that it’s been difficult to point to a single reason why labor has been harder to find and hold on to over the past year.

They began to assess their staffing situation this spring as help wanted ads were not drawing much attention and high school and college workers would be dropping their hours back once school picked up in August.

A full lunch crowd enjoys the food at Spanky’s South in Tama. The cafe was reopened late last month for breakfast and lunch, Monday through Friday. Contributed photo

Since the winter time, Boldt said the response they have been getting from job recruiting efforts has fallen off a cliff. Ads through Iowa Workforce Development, Indeed.com and Facebook would bring in only one or two candidates. Boldt said sometimes the responses they would get would be from people interested in helping out occasionally but not interested in regular employment.

Finally last month, they made the difficult decision to close the Gladbrook restaurant for regular dining hours. Boldt said they remain open for catering and look to maintain the Gladbrook location as an event center for parties, meetings and special holiday meals as they’ve done in the past.

“It’s hard. We’ve already lost so much in downtown Gladbrook,” Boldt said. “It’s always such a joy for everyone to see cars parked up and down the street. It’s going to hurt and I think anytime a town starts to lose things, morale tends to go down.”

Boldt said she would like to reopen the Gladbrook location for regular dining hours but that they would need two dedicated cooks and two dedicated serving staff to make that happen. She’s confident the traffic is there to support a restaurant in Gladbrook but that it’s future is largely dependent on a stable workforce that can handle regular hours.

While the business in Gladbrook was becoming more difficult to operate, the kitchen at the Tama Livestock Auction was just about ready to reopen after rebuilding from the derecho damage last August.

The dining room of Spanky’s Restaurant in Gladbrook is now closed for regular hours but remains an event venue for catering, parties, meetings and large group gatherings. Contributed photo

For the moment, the staff level at the Tama location is stable but Boldt said she’d be happy to have more help in the event someone were to leave or need to take an extended absence.

The Boldts’ history with the Tama Livestock Auction kitchen dates back further than the past year. From 2009 to 2014 Boldt, along with her husband David and sons Clayton and Lane, ran the kitchen that was open a few days of the week to coincide with sale days at the auction house. She returned to the part-time business in Tama in 2019 and split time between the restaurant in Gladbrook and the Tama kitchen on cattle sale days. That was until the storm hit last August.

Now, the story has come full circle for the family as they return to the Tama location, now offering breakfast and lunch from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday.

After the 2020 derecho severely damaged the Tama Livestock Auction facility, owners Jason and Mandy Lekin have been hard at work rebuilding over the past year.

Most of the kitchen has been replaced and Boldt said the Lekins have been gracious in working with her to put together a new diner that works well for Boldt’s operation.

Spanky’s staff and volunteers gather in the kitchen in Gladbrook after a successful special event meal. Following the 2020 pandemic, restaurants and hospitality companies across the country have struggled to recruit and maintain regular staff. Contributed photo

Boldt said she’s excited at the opportunity to return to Tama-Toledo five days a week and be working in a format that feels both sustainable and with potential to grow.

“I can run this place with two or three people and that makes so much more sense than breaking our backs working open to close at the larger place in Gladbrook,” Boldt said.

Though the Monday through Friday business has shifted to Tama, Boldt said she’s maintained her relationship with Hometown Family Market in Gladbrook as her food supplier.

“They’re the first grocers I’ve ever worked with that have gone out of their way to make sure we get what we need, when we need it and is just always available,” Boldt said.

The current goal with Spanky’s South is to establish itself as the go-to breakfast destination in Tama-Toledo.

Recent closures of Big T Maid-Rite, the Trojan Inn, King Tower and the Tama Cafe had left Tama-Toledo without a place to order eggs and pancakes in the morning.

Boldt said the lunch crowd in Tama took off quickly after they reopened and that she sees the biggest room for growth during the breakfast hours.

Currently her staffing level doesn’t support weekend breakfast hours but she hopes with growth during the week and potential for the labor market to pick up, that Spanky’s South could also offer Saturday breakfast in the future.

Although it’s been difficult to recruit new help, Boldt believes her restaurant business is a fulfilling place to work.

“I’ve always looked at this job, personally, as a challenge,” Boldt said. “It gives you something new and different every day. It’s also a family atmosphere where we hope to have our employees feel like a part of the team and part of a family that understands and can work around family schedules. We work together to make it all happen.”

One of the highlights of her time running the restaurant in Gladbrook is the opportunity they had to make an impact on the lives of young people that come to work there. Boldt said she’s watched high schoolers come out of their shell as a server or working with the team in the kitchen.

Jeff Guyer is one of Boldt’s regular employees working at Spanky’s South in Tama. Guyer said he worked for 23 years as a union painter but left that line of work after injuring his back.

He gravitated to the food service industry as it was less taxing on his body and it was something he grew up enjoying.

“I like feeding people and making people happy,” Guyer said. “Today for example, a guy came in and had my bacon gravy over hashbrowns and was like, ‘That’s the best breakfast I had all year.’ That was awesome to hear.”

The current menu at Spanky’s South offers rotating lunch specials like hot beef, ham balls and potatoes and hamburger steaks to go along with regular burgers, tenderloins, chicken sandwiches and fried sides.

The breakfast menu is compact, but features staples like eggs to order, bacon, sausage, pancakes, french toast, hash browns and a breakfast sandwich.

Spanky’s South is open M-F, 7-2 p.m. at the Tama Livestock Auction at 1908 E 5th St, Tama, Iowa. They can be found on Facebook at Spanky’s Restaurant & Catering or by phone at 641-473-0025.