A Sweet 100 Years: Raton’s Pappas Family Celebrates a Century of “Going Forward”in the Food Service Industry
By Pat Veltri
One hundred years of anything is a remarkable accomplishment. Despite seeming like it’s been around forever, any business that makes it to that illustrious benchmark had to start somewhere and Pappas’ Sweet Shop Restaurant is no different.
THE FIRST GENERATION: JIM PAPPAS
Demitri Pappoedomanolakis, aka Jim Pappas, made his way to the small town of Raton, in the newly established state of New Mexico, in 1912, with little more than the clothes on his back, a tag on his coat bearing his name and destination and a few coins in his pocket. He spoke very little English, hence the tag on his coat, so that one of the locals would show him the way to the Van Houten coal camp.
At seventeen years of age, Jim had debarked in New York City from his native Greece in search of a new life in America, where the ambitious and adventurous could make their fortunes. He was born on the island of Crete, the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, on June 21, 1893. He stayed in New York City for a few months, then moved to Detroit, Michigan where he secured a position as a laborer for the Ford Motor Company. Before long Jim made his way to the Raton area, namely the coal camp of Van Houten. He had been encouraged to try his hand at working in the coal mining industry by a couple of American cousins who were coal miners in Van Houten. It was at Van Houten that his name was shortened to Pappas by mining officials who were clearly put to the test by the spelling of his over-long Greek name. His given name, Demitri, was anglicized to Jim.
While working the arduous job of coal mining, Jim Pappas dreamed of earning enough money to buy his own business. In `1918, after six years of digging coal, Jim received a draft notice from Uncle Sam’s Army, where he served for a short period of time until World War I was over. Returning to Van Houten, he was rehired to mine coal, but his second stab at the job lasted not quite the length of a shift. The incident that steered Jim away from mining and propelled him into the business world was described in the May 16, 1964 issue of The Raton Daily Range: “Pappas said he had loaded a coal car and was pushing it out of the mine when it jumped the track. He unloaded the car, repaired the track, put the car back on the track, reloaded it and started to push it again. ‘I pushed it a little way and it jumped off the track again. I threw all my tools in the car, walked out of the mine and threw a big chunk of coal over my shoulder and headed to Raton,’ Pappas said.”
In Raton Jim Pappas was involved in various business pursuits. He bought a hotel with borrowed money, then sold it two months later earning a fifty dollar profit. He then went on to operate the Bisbee Pool Hall for one and a half years.
In 1920 he became involved in a three-way partnership with Mike Christos and Pete Damengos for the manufacturing of goat cheese. These were the years of Prohibition and a few rumors and speculations were bandied about pointing to moonshine as another product being manufactured along with the goat cheese.
Jim had made a deal with Antime Meloche, owner of the widely known TO Ranch, to lease some grazing land for his herd of goats. With money he had saved he purchased 544 goats from a rancher in Mora and he and a helper drove them 150 miles across the country in five days to the TO Ranch. The goat cheese (and moonshine) enterprise operated in southwest Raton on Gardiner Road. In six months, the business dissolved and the goats were sold for five dollars a head.
Jim Pappas and Mike Christos then managed a cafe on South First Street for a year before putting it up for sale. Jim moved on to Denver, Colorado, searching for yet another business to buy a stake in. While in Denver a friend, Gus Petritis, sparked his interest in candy making. Although he had no experience as a confectioner, he decided to return to Raton to establish a candy business. He and Gus Petritis, who was well versed in the basics of candy making, collaborated and formed a partnership. The two partners opened the Korner Kandy Kitchen, staying in business for a mere thirty-six days before selling it to Eric Kintsel and Marcum Honeyfield. The venue wasn’t suited to their purposes. Their long-range plans required a larger space that would accommodate a soda fountain plus table seating. While looking for another location, Jim worked as a waiter at the Deluxe Cafe.
In 1923, with borrowed money, Jim Pappas and Gus Petritis purchased the Sweet Shop from Tom Logan, and on November 19, 1923 they opened for business primarily as a candy shop and soft drink parlor, but they also sold a few sandwiches. The Sweet Shop was located in downtown Raton on Second Street, just north of Park Avenue, next to the movie theater. Initially Gus made the candy, but in 1926, he became ill and unable to work for a length of time. To keep the business operating normally a resourceful Jim taught himself the rudiments of making candy, a task he assumed responsibility for during Gus’s prolonged illness and the duration of the partnership.
Jim Pappas had been so involved in his diverse array of entrepreneurial pursuits that he didn’t take the time for a courting relationship. Ten years into the successful establishment of the Sweet Shop, when he was close to forty years of age, Jim returned to Greece to meet an eligible young woman that he had learned about through correspondence with one of his uncles. Within a short period of time, he had met, courted, and married nineteen year old Katherine Tornazakis. The couple stayed in Greece until the birth of their first son, Mike. In October 1934, Jim and his new family returned to Raton and the Sweet Shop. In time two more sons, John and Nick, were added to the family.
Jim Pappas and Gus Petritis operated the Sweet Shop as partners for thirty-two years. In 1955 Gus decided to retire and sold his interest in the business to Jim. From then on the Sweet Shop has been completely in the hands of the Pappas family.
Jim and Katherine Pappas continued the operation of the Sweet Shop until 1958, when they handed the reins over to their eldest son Mike. Both of them continued to work at the Sweet Shop but without the added responsibility of being “in charge”.
A coal miner, a hotel owner, a partner in a goat cheese enterprise, a cafe operator, a waiter, a presumed moonshiner – Demitri Pappoedomanolakis, the “sweetest man around” to his friends and customers, finally found his niche in the confectionery business, setting in motion a family dynasty in candy making and the food service industry that has lasted for a “sweet” 100 years.
THE SECOND GENERATION: MIKE PAPPAS
Mike Pappas graduated from the University of Denver in 1956, worked in the Denver area for a while as an accountant, and then moved back to Raton in 1958 for his initiation into the family enterprise. He added a restaurant to supplement the candy and ice cream business. In a 2013 interview for The Raton Range, Mike said, “When I came home from college the candy and ice cream business was dying out so I added a few sandwiches and we grew from there. It just kind of snowballed on us.”
Mike noted that he was fortunate to have a couple of experienced cooks to help him as he started the restaurant part of the business. “Jimmy Martinez was a really good little cook. He worked for awhile and he got me going, and then Wiley Padilla came along and really helped keep us going,” Mike remembered in The Range interview.
On August 27, 1962 Mike married Joy Walker, a ‘Southern belle” from Tennessee who in the course of time became his business partner as well as his life partner, and they had a daughter, Ann Marie.
Subsequent to the death of Mike’s father in 1971, he and his mother Kathryn continued working together. Kathyrn baked every morning, becoming well-known for her specialties, homemade bread and cinnamon rolls.
In 1973, some fifty years after it was founded, the Sweet Shop moved to its present location, 1201 South Second Street. The move came about because Sunwest Bank bought out First National Bank and wanted to expand its premises. From the beginning, the Sweet Shop building was sandwiched between the El Raton Movie Theater and the First National Bank. Mike Pappas made a deal with Sunwest Bank that was mutually beneficial to both parties, whereby the bank got his downtown building and he was able to finance a new building.
After the loss of Katherine, who passed away in 1987, Mike and his wife Joy continued making candy and operating the restaurant, but eventually, the candy-making was dropped and they focused entirely on the restaurant. Joy tried her hand in the retail market, successfully operating a Hallmark franchise and Cory Jo’s Gift Shop for about twenty-five years.
When a fire broke out in the Sweet Shop kitchen in 2003, the restaurant was forced to close for six months in order to restore things to working order. Being closed for half a year wasn’t easy, but after the remodeling was completed the business rose like a phoenix from the ashes, bouncing back better than ever, with one of the largest, most modern restaurant kitchens in the area. Another significant change after the remodeling was the addition of a coffee shop in the space that previously housed Joy’s gift shop.
Mike Pappas was involved in the running of the “sweetest place in Raton” for over fifty years, all the while putting a great deal of hard work, passion, and determination into building a top notch restaurant. “Anyone in the food business has to like it,” he said. “You have to like quality food, you have to like your customers and you have to like what you’re doing and enjoy what you’re doing to make it succeed. If you don’t, then you open and close.” He felt the biggest challenge of operating a restaurant is “maintaining a high standard, a high quality, and trying to keep it that way.”
THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATIONS: ANN MARIE PAPPAS AND MATTHEW RIGDON
With the passing of Joy Pappas in 2011, followed by Mike Pappas in October 2013, the Sweet Shop’s future was uncertain, and the restaurant was closed for several months. With some guidance from the television show Restaurant Impossible, the eatery re-opened in May, 2014 under the management of Mike’s daughter, Ann Marie Pappas and his grandson, Matthew Rigdon. The Coffee Shop was remodeled with a new retro look and the dining room was transformed into a banquet and special events room. Antique memorabilia, relating to the Sweet Shop’s manufacture of candy and ice cream, are scattered throughout the restaurant’s rooms, while the walls hold several panoramic photographs celebrating the history of Raton.
Taking their cue from esteemed family members Jim and Mike Pappas, Ann Marie and Matthew continue to set their standards high, serving their customers quality food, made from scratch, including homemade bread baked daily on the premises. The menu offers American and Mexican cuisine for breakfast or lunch, at reasonable prices, from Wednesday through Sunday, 8:00 am – 2:00 pm.
Ann Marie and Matthew are the restaurant’s culinary artists. Their mastery of food preparation came about mostly from on the job training. “We’ve learned tips and advice from many professionals over the years that worked at the restaurant but mostly learned by doing. Matthews’s a better cook than I am!”, says Ann Marie. Matthew got his start in the restaurant business at the tender age of six when he began bussing tables at the Sweet Shop. From there he worked his way up the line and tried all the aspects of restaurant work – dishwasher, waiter, host, kitchen worker – until he found his groove with cooking.
The Sweet Shop’s signature sandwich, chicken salad on homemade bread, has been on the menu since the beginning and continues to be the most popular lunch item. All sandwiches are served on homemade bread, made from Katherine Pappas’ original recipe. Nowadays, the bread baker is Tim Horner, who on occasion also bakes cinnamon rolls, using another of Katherine’s recipes.
Dependable, reliable employees, many of them long time staff members, work together as a team to keep the Sweet Shop operating “sweetly” and smoothly. Members of The Sweet Shop’s crew include Sherry Rigdon, Matt’s wife, Tim Horner, Debbie Sandoval, Robert Padilla, Arthur Fulkerson, Carolina Apodaca, Dominic Apodaca, Randy Vilen, Sandy Sandoval, Mellisa Gutierrez, and Jared Mendez.
At the November 14th meeting of the Raton City Commission, Ann Marie Pappas received a proclamation from Mayor Pro-tem, Linde Schuster, recognizing the Sweet Shop as a centenarian restaurant in the city of Raton.
On November 19th, the 100th anniversary of the original opening date of the Sweet Shop, Ann Marie and Matthew hosted a gala open house for friends and customers. The fare included lots of “sweets” – cream puffs, baklava, cake, candy, and root beer floats – as well as chicken salad and burritos. Three former employees of the Sweet Shop had a hand in making the day a “sweet” success! Carmen Martinez baked the special anniversary cake, the carrot cakes were baked by Diana Sanchez, and Remy Martinez made the cream puffs.
1923-2023 – Ten decades of putting food on customers’ plates by four generations of the Pappas family. How was the Sweet Shop able to manage this amazing feat?
First of all, consistency – the business stayed in the hands of one family; next, outstanding food quality, and further, a dedicated customer following, all contributed to the restaurant’s centennial status. Ann Marie says, “The customer support over the years through all the good and bad times is what has kept it going. I’m amazed actually. There have been so many challenging periods.” Matthew contends the business has endured because of “stubbornness”. “It’s the Greek bloodline,” he says. “There’s no desire to ever quit; always keep going forward, no matter what happens, you keep going forward”. Matthew is justifiably proud, “I’m the fourth generation to still be doing what my great-grandpa started,” he says. Sweet, right?
