We hear a lot about being self-employed. Being your own boss. Starting your own business and having your own brand.
We talk about it like it’s commonplace, as though it’s the natural outcome of any grown-up endeavor, or at least the most worthy one.
We’re inundated with this small-business mythology: online and in real life, from politicians who talk about protecting small businesses to random people we in cafes overheard saying, “Oh, I have a few companies,” like it’s no big deal; classes for serial entrepreneurs; banner ads peddling degrees in entrepreneurialism, and every single authority united on one thing:
“You Have To Build Your Brand.”
Let fly the buzzwords.
But there is more to the mythology of small business than hashtags and ebooks. “Branding” existed long before the invention of websites, social media posts, and Canva, and before the word “brand” existed as a verb.
Where does this mythology come from? What is it about being your own boss that merits a “mythology” at all?
In order to understand, it helps to engage with the experience of previous generations.
You could ask the folks who immigrated to America to escape political repression or government malfunction, mortal danger, or lack of opportunity for themselves and their families. Their idea of business ownership might just run a little differently than, say, some Gen Alpha named Everest pumping out #SigmaMaleGrindset TikToks and preaching the virtues of dropshipping.
The immigrant’s perception of owning a business might run a little something like this:
In one country, the worker’s life is essentially owned and controlled by masters of industry, corrupt officials, or crimelords. But in America, it’s possible to be your own master, and maybe even have folks working under you.
The freedom to go from the worker to the boss represents something completely unheard of and almost impossible to conceive: the freedom to redefine one's identity, one's reach and access, one’s status in society.
In a word, the freedom to become somebody.
Owning your own business meant controlling your destiny. You could even influence the destiny of your descendants through your legacy.
Having something to pass down to the next generation—something that generates wealth in the same way that rich folks passed down their fortunes—was and in many respects still is the definition of “social mobility.”
But to what lengths would someone go to secure it? At what cost? What doubts, depths, and difficulties would they take upon themselves out of the faith that it will eventually lead to a legacy of freedom?
How about escaping Mussolini? Laboring for fifteen hours a day, six days a week? Joining the Army and seeing your family only twice in six years?
Talking to Demetrios Arvanites, I saw what it means to walk the line between believing in a dream and the doubts that arise with the benefit of time. I even learned what it means to leave behind one's home country, armed only with the near-certain belief that it is not the land upon which one lives that determines one's fate, value, or identity, but what one is free to do with that land.
I learned of the great contradictions that mark nearly all accomplished people, both the pride and the penitence, and what it means to live based not on what one feels or likes or even necessarily desires, but on necessity.
It turns out the path between being a child laborer in one country and becoming the boss in another may not be as long as it seems. All this, despite the detours of becoming a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather along the way.
When a Greek Meets a Greek
Demetrios Arvanites was born in 1935 in Sparta, located on the Peloponnese Peninsula of southwestern Greece. He grew up seventeen kilometers (about 10.5 miles) outside of Sparta proper, on the side of a mountain.
Between then and now, this unassuming Greek son would emigrate to the United States in ‘51, serve in the Army, and go on to own no less than five diners in the heart of Newark, New Jersey before retiring at the age of 62.
Sixty-Two! Who does that nowadays?!
Even before he was born, Demetrios’s uncle George came to the United States at the age of eleven. Almost immediately, the young George found work in a restaurant, a time and place that would define not only his own path but that of his nephew, when the latter came to the US himself.
And it was not just any restaurant. It was a diner.
Like any top-shelf, professional interviewer, I ask Demetrios to deviate from his story to indulge me in a tangent, partly from raw dumb curiosity and partly from the hope that it might shed some light on his life.
Why are so many diners started and owned by people of Greek descent?
“There’s a saying,” he began. I could hear the smile in his voice. “When a Greek meets a Greek, they open a restaurant.”
That checks out.
He went on to say, not without pride, “whoever comes over [from Greece] probably doesn’t speak English so he’d get a job in a restaurant with a Greek owner. He would start as a dishwasher and move up and up and up over the years, and eventually open his own restaurant.”
And that’s why diners are Greek. There’s a chicken-and-egg question in there somewhere, but let’s move on. We’ll talk food later.
When Demetrios was growing up, he had two entrepreneurs in his family: his uncles George and Gregory*. Better to be your own boss than to work for other people, they’d say. It was akin to a human virtue. “I saw that a lot, the urge to push forward and be the boss when I was growing up, especially with regard to restaurants.”
So while his future in restaurants was not carved in stone, it was, perhaps, written in ink.
A New Home(s)
Demetrios left Greece in 1951 when he was sixteen years old. He wouldn’t be back to his home country for the better part of a decade.
But he did not become a restaurant-owner immediately. Oh, no. That’s not how it worked. The way it worked was: Demetrios washed dishes. For four years.
At twenty years old, he needed a little perspective, a change in scenery. So he took a big step.
Nowadays, young men sometimes attempt to “find themselves” by backpacking across Europe or taking a “gap year.” Good for them for having such options. But back in Demetrios’s day, you generally did what he did:
He joined the Army, enlisting in 1956. Coincidentally, on Valentine’s Day.
This man’s encyclopedic memory reels down his Army timeline like he’s telling me how to make his signature omelet.
“First I went to Fort Dix for a week, and then Fort Carson* in Colorado for four months, and then to Camp Irwin in California for two months, and then Germany for sixteen months. I liked all of those places; I had fun; I was single and young back then, believe it or not.” He laughs, but I believe it.
Sparta was always his favorite destination, even if it was a fleeting one.
“I visited home twice.” His family was always thrilled to see him. Six years is a long time; that’s how long it had been since he departed.
His mother and five siblings supported his endeavors; they were proud of their intrepid young soldier.
Coming back to the States for good in ‘58, he went right back into the restaurant industry. Now he knew what he wanted: to be the boss of a restaurant.
He worked with his Uncle George as a short order cook for three more years before starting his own place. “For all that time,” he explains, “I’d washed dishes and cooked for someone else. Now I did it for myself.”
So four years dishwashing, two years in the military, three years as a short order cook....patience really is a virtue. Perhaps a dying art.
Head Honcho
On February 1st, 1961, Demetrios opened up his first restaurant with his uncle George: George’s Coffee Shop at 51 Academy Street in Newark, New Jersey.
“We sold a thousand cups of coffee there a day,” he gloats, justifiably. And now his son, Yianni, sells coffee at LOKL Cafe. But we’d get to that later.
He preferred the busy, frenetic, all-over-the-place energy that comes with being the boss. “If you don’t, you’re not made to do it. You need to like the activity; otherwise the place will fail.” He was a driven young man, yes, but part of what drove him was the prospect of turning failing restaurants into successes.
That was the case with the next two shops both in Newark: Crystal Coffee Shop on Broad Street and North, and then Park Coffee Shop on Park Place.
Becoming the boss was a natural transition; for countless years since childhood, he’d watched his uncle and other smart, driven adults running restaurants around him.
One thing he learned was to be hands-on. “At George’s on Academy Street, I woke up at 4:00 in the morning and got home at seven at night, six days a week.” And you know what else? “I never needed government assistance; I was never on the unemployment line.”
Pride shines through, like the early rays of sun he likely saw before anyone else.
Hands-On Means Handy
Another thing he’d absorbed was to limit expenses. “I became very handy with repairs, plumbing, electrical, painting.... I did everything myself. If the water heater needed changing, I changed it.”
But why be good at everything? Personal pride?
“Well, otherwise, you have to hire professionals to do it and that just eats into your business’s ability to survive.”
That ingenuity allowed him to open his next two restaurants: Seaport Restaurant on Route 4 in Fairlawn, followed by the Sunlight Diner in Kearny.
And in case you’re not local, that’s pronounced “KAR-nee,” not “KUR-nee.”
All of these success stories were spread out over a thirty-year period.
Patience. Remember? Demetrios must have been busy. Like, really busy. But he was used to it.
He describes washing dishes for those four years before the army: “I worked ten hours a day, six days a week for $25 a week. In Greece, it would have taken me a year to save twenty-five bucks, but here.... Every month, I would send my mother forty dollars. At that time, in Greece, you could retire on forty bucks a month.”
How did it feel to be able to send that money? “It felt good because at least I was helping.”
But he didn’t do it because it felt good. He did it because he had to do it. Any good feelings were a bonus.
A Window is Also a Mirror
In interviewing Demetrios, I started to realize something. In my line of questioning, I asked things like, “how did that feel?” or “is that what you wanted?”
But in Demetrios’s place and time of life, young people weren’t often asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Their jobs and professions weren’t selected based on what they wanted, desired, or aspired to be, let alone what they “felt like doing.”
If aspirations were at work (and of course, they were), they aligned less with personal ambition and more with allowing themselves and their families to survive and thrive to the extent that it was possible in a society with far fewer options for young people and far less interest in what they thought, felt, or wanted, than it has today. Not because of callousness, necessarily, but because of necessity.
That’s what drove them, and Demetrios: necessity.
And from that motivation came a lifetime of achievement, drive, workmanship, partnerships, brightened days and lives from countless meals and cups of coffee, fed and paid workforces, enriched local economies, and a family tree three generations taller, whose leaves and branches owe their place under the sun, in part, to his will to live.
And for Demetrios and so many men and women who helped build this country, “to live” meant “to work.”
Their pride, their style, their very existence is based on that.
Yet amid this paradigm, in quiet moments when the mind wanders down the roads of its past, chancing upon vectors of regret and vacancies that ache with emptiness, inconvenient questions linger at its end.
Though he escaped his dangerous home country and defended his new one; though he owned five businesses and supported his family generously; though he brought new lives into this world that now thrive and plan their own legacies, unbounded by necessity, as he was; though his own two hands built all of this, one can’t help but wonder:
“What could have been?”
Through this lens, some of the contradictions start to show in relief, both of the man and of the small business mythology. It’s one thing to be your own boss, to be free, to be in charge with no one telling you what to do.
But the freedom itself can sometimes get lost in the upwelling currents of work required to build and maintain it.
“I would’ve liked to have more freedom when I was younger,” he says.
What would he have done instead?
“Education. I regret not having it. But I couldn’t have both work and school.”
It’s not like he hadn’t tried. In 1954, Demetrios went to high school for a few months. He worked his dishwashing job from four in the morning until seven at night, and school started the next day at 8:00am.
“I didn’t have time to study, so I had to quit. I needed the money to help my family in Greece. And I couldn’t have both,” he repeats, a little mournfully.
But why wasn’t there much of a primary education while he was in Greece? They have schools there, too.
There is a reason for it, one that Americans today might have trouble understanding. It happened in 1940, when Demetrios was five years old, affecting not just his life but the life of the world.
“The Italians invaded Greece. Then the Germans in ‘42. And then Greeks started fighting Greeks from ‘46 to ‘50 or ‘51.”
So there was not much schooling to be had in Greece at this time. Staying fed and away from the crossfire was more important.
Actually, after losing his father, John, in 1948, Demetrios’s uncle George wanted to send him to the United States to get an education, which would mean leaving behind his five siblings and newly widowed mother. But there was always going to be the issue of his family’s well-being.
“We were very poor there in Sparta. I had to make some money or else my family would starve.”
Maybe that starts to explain his connection to food. And if anything will build a solid work ethic, it’s that. But even work ethic—which drives achievement and success in business—has its doubled edge.
“If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t work as hard as I did all those years. I would have hired people to do things for me. Working 4:00am to 7:00pm? I didn’t have to do that.”
But that’s what life had taught him. That and food.
Pea Soup and Mashed Potatoes
The menu at an Arvanites diner was traditional but reliable. Sandwiches were the star: tuna, chicken salad, egg salad, roast beef, pastrami, corned beef. Need something a bit more intricate? The beef stew always satisfied; the meatloaf was legendary.
It was the kind of food that stuck to your ribs but left you wanting more.
Demetrios attributes much of his success to never cutting corners on quality. “My uncle taught me, never serve anything that you wouldn’t serve your family.”
“But I always hated pea soup and mashed potatoes.”
That’s oddly specific. What’s that all about?
“We used to starve to death in Greece. Then when I came here, my uncle would put mashed potatoes and pea soup on the plate in front of me, and I had to eat it because I was hungry. But I used to empty the salt shaker into it to kill the taste.”
Perhaps that wasn’t the only taste he was killing.
“But later on, it’s strange. They became my favorites. I can’t resist pea soup now.”
I’m glad that story has a happy ending. What changed?
“Back then, I had to eat them because there was nothing else to eat. Now, I have everything to eat, but I also have the stomach to put it in.”
Make of that what you will, dear reader.
Like Father, Like Son. More or Less.
“I never wanted my kids to go into the restaurant business.” Instead, Demetrios wanted his three children to get the education he never did, to do the things he never could.
But what do you know, his son Yianni (known to our LOKL family as John), didn’t want to go to college initially. The rogue! So what did he want to do?
You guessed it.
“John was determined to finish high school and come work with me, and we would open a restaurant as father and son.”
This childlike and rather touching plan had its limits when it came to execution. Demetrios told his son, if he wanted to own a restaurant, he had to start the same way his father did: washing dishes.
“After three months, he changed his mind.” Demetrios laughs with both pride and gratitude.
Yianni would later become a CPA; in fact, all of the Arvanites kids became CPAs. But food and drink were still in Yianni’s heart. Upon opening LOKL Cafe in Morristown, he found a new way to achieve what Demetrios had always wanted for him: ownership.
“He has a restaurant,” he explains, “but he doesn’t work in the restaurant.” That’s the distinction.
Here’s another: “I sold coffee for fifteen cents. Yianni sells it for three or four dollars.”
At his Park Coffee Shop in Newark, Demetrios sold 1500 cups a day. I don’t know how many cups LOKL sells per day, but I’m sure—and Demetrios agrees—it’s plenty.
The Open Road
After close to four decades in the industry, Demetrios retired.
The daily grind, the routine, the action, the activity, the excitement, the challenge, were no longer necessary. He’d made it. How did that feel?
“After a few years, I was going crazy.”
Oof. But that feeling was not permanent. Eventually, gratitude took over, for his success, for his family, for his seven grandchildren and one great grandchild.
“Thank God.” He says it more than once. “Life was good to me. A full life and a full stomach.”
So what’s next for Demetrios?
There’s a long silence. “Presently nothing,” he says, but he amends it: “Basically being a great-grandfather, spending time with my family at barbecues and things. I look forward to plenty of that....”
But his voice careens up slightly towards the end; his words represent part of the truth, but not all of it. He is deciding whether to speak the rest. There is a word for this: “metanoia.” In Ancient Greek, it means, “changing one’s mind.” It can also mean a reframing of the truth, a continuation of it.
I think Demetrios is in the process of metanoia.
After what seems like a while, he continues. “But now that I’m 89 years old, I’m too damn old. The time to enjoy life is when you’re young.”
My empathy butts in. But Demetrios, I counter, you built up a wealth of your own, a wealth of a family and success and life.
“Right,” he confirms, “but everything comes to the end. And you wonder, I killed myself all these years and what did I get out of it?”
But his tone is not despondent. Not at all. In fact, he laughs. “Life is too short, but enjoy it while you can. I always thank God that mine was good to me. My life came out pretty close to what I was expecting.”
Do you think that’s a good thing? To get what you expected?
“Yes.”
My thoughts alight on “the kids these days,” generations of young and youngish people—whose lives were shaped less by great depressions and wars and more by unprecedented economic growth and the expansion of the middle class—who now struggle to define “their brand” as they would their own identity.
My last question for Demetrios references them without naming them.
Do you think a person can be successful without necessity? Without a family that needs to be fed or the constant threat of deprivation?
“Yes. But if you don’t work for it, you’ll never have it. So you better work hard. If you try your best, you’re always going to be successful.”
Therein lies the wisdom of a man whose destiny was written not by prophecy, but by his own designs, by trying his best: to own his future, to try in his own way, and to leave something better behind.
And for that, as Demetrios is grateful to God and good fortune, we are grateful to him and to men and women like him, whose willingness to do what needs to be done makes the impossible possible, and moves us towards a world where we discover ourselves not in our compulsions, but in our freedom.