Elmquist leaves Chardonnay for Millwood job

by Jennifer Brown

SBJ Reporter

jbrown@sbj.net

Kirk Elmquist has corked Chardonnay in favor of a new position created for him at Millwood Golf and Racquet Club. Elmquist started Sept.15 as director of marketing for Millwood and Keltner Properties.

In addition to marketing for Millwood and Mikayla's Grille, Elmquist will help with marketing for Millwood's subdivisions at Evans Road and Highway 65 for owners Keith and Wanda Keltner.

"He will be involved in all the various companies that myself and family operate, like our land development company, home construction and, of course, Millwood Golf and Racquet Club and other things that we have," said Keith Keltner who founded Millwood in 1995. The club has 450 members. Millwood subdivision includes 350 acres and has 95 lots available out of 529 total.

Contracts

Elmquist's 12-month contract with Chardonnay officially ended in May 2002; however, Elmquist said he stayed for four additional months to help staff adjust to the change.

Elmquist said his change of career is not only beneficial for him personally, allowing him to have more family time, but he hopes the change will benefit the restaurant.

"It just came to a good business decision to get myself off the payroll at Chardonnay to help Chardonnay become more financially viable," he said. "I enjoyed all 16 months of working at Chardonnay, every one of them, and would still be there if I felt like there was something else I could do for them."

Elmquist's position will not be filled, but his duties will be divided among Chardonnay owner Bill Jester, executive chef Roman Rodrequez and manager Matt Bekebede.

"We have a great management team, and we have a great business plan in place, and that's what Kirk left us with," Jester said.

Under Elmquist's leadership, the restaurant had a successful summer of entertainment with sales up 20 percent over last year, Jester said. Future events for the fall and winter months are already in place thanks to Elmquist, Jester said.

The change does not come as a surprise to Jester, who said Millwood is fitting for Elmquist.

"We're excited about the thing he has gone to; his first love is golf and we knew that all along. He didn't really come from a restaurant background, he came from a business management background, but that's what we needed," Jester said.

The new position was one designed for Elmquist, Keltner said. "I've known about Kirk for some years and he's always looked at Millwood longingly so when we decided that we wanted a marketing manager, he was the first guy we thought about. We picked up the phone and called him and hadn't got three words out of our mouth and he said, I'll be there.'"

Elmquist said he also had job offers from two other local companies but decided Millwood was the right fit. "Millwood is growing and they just needed some help in their marketing, and I'm honored that they chose me to come and run it," he said.

Elmquist will be working on a five-year development plan for Keltner Properties.

The position

Prior to working at Chardonnay, Elmquist worked for 4 1/2 years as associate executive director of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. In his new career, he will add real estate marketing to his resume. "I've been accustomed to doing (marketing and promotion) but now the real estate element will be a new adventure for me," Elmquist said.

New marketing plans include working closely with Dan Schumacher, the general manager and the director of golf at Millwood. Elmquist said he will bring to the job some of the aspects of customer relations that he learned as a restaurant general manager.

"Chardonnay taught me a lot about taking care of people I learned that people like to have fun and they like to be entertained, and people like to come to a place where they feel like they are welcome," Elmquist said. "We're really going to emphasize the energy of the people; that's our focus, entertaining people, showing people a good experience in golf events and corporate golf outings. That's one of my big pushes that I would like to take out here: Entertaining customers and clients so they can have a good business environment for them to close their sales," Elmquist said.