The Ott House Pub: Then and Now

Some of you may remember a story on The Ott House Pub that Beverage Journal ran in September 2011 (pasted at end). In the article, owners and brother-sister team Bobby Ott and Susan Glass discussed the challenges and rewards of owning a small business, the dynamics of working with family, and The Ott House’s unique role in the community.

We thought it’d be fun to check back in with Susie and see how things are going eight years since that article.

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We Are Maryland Small Business: You’re approaching 50 years since The Ott House was opened by your father and older brother. How many family members are currently working at The Ott House?

Susie Glass: Bobby and I have worked here since the beginning. Presently, two sisters, some of our children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren work at the restaurant, for a total of 21 family members. We have three generations of family members working here full or part time.

Owners and siblings Bob Ott and Susie Glass

WAMSB: What is it like working with such a large staff of family?

Susie: Our staff is made up of a motley crew of individuals. Some of us are Otts, others are “Notts,” as Bob likes to say. We employ 35 people, all of whom step in where needed on any given day. Sometimes the owner may also be the dishwasher; that is the reality of a small, family-owned business. The staff, previous employees, and patrons have become extended members of the Ott family.

WAMSB: Tell me a little about your community.

Susie: Bob and I were born and raised in Emmitsburg. Emmitsburg is home to a tradition-rich community, Mount St. Mary’s University, and the National Emergency Training Center (NETC). Bob and I have grown up with generations of locals, seen 49 classes of MSM students graduate since opening The Ott House, and connected with individuals from all over the world during their stay at the NETC. We are one of the longest running business in town; our family roots date back to the establishment of Emmitsburg.

WAMSB: Apart from serving and getting to know your customers, how do you stay involved in your community?

Susie: Being a good neighbor in a small community can mean sponsoring a sports team, school, church, community event, or something as simple as preparing a batch of coleslaw for two hundred and fifty people to raise money for a local fundraising event. We try to help wherever we can.

The Ott House is proud to host our annual Catoctin High School Safe and Sane Silent and Live Auction. With help from committed parents and community members, prizes and unique items are collected from our beverage wholesalers and local retailers. We host a popular local band and raise a lot of money for the high school’s all night graduation party. Everyone has a great time!

Another way we give back is by providing a charitable sponsorship for Vigilant Hose Company, which has served Emmitsburg since 1884.

WAMSB: How do you support other Maryland businesses?

Susie: We are committed to showcasing local, Maryland-owned beer brands; we love to introduce Maryland products to our patrons from all over the country. Our customers are frequently looking for local recommendations, and we are eager to share what Maryland has to offer.

WAMSB: Can you offer any advice to aspiring small business owners?

Susie: Our parents taught us integrity and instilled in us a great work ethic. Owning and running a small business takes sacrifice, long hours, and commitment in order for it to survive.

WAMSB: One last question—after working together all the time, does the family still vacation together?!

Susie: Yes! As our family continues to grow, vacationing together is getting logistically more challenging, but we love to get away to the beach. It is refreshing to have someone wait on us for a change, but my favorite part is having the opportunity to gather ideas from other family-owned businesses in the areas we visit. We close the restaurant for the week we are gone, which allows us to make needed repairs or upgrades to the restaurant that cannot be completed when we are open.

The Ott House staff

Original story, published in Beverage Journal in September 2011.

The In Place in Emmitsburg Is Definitely The Ott House

By Ted Durgin

The widely held belief that you should never go into business with family has been shattered by the Otts of Emmitsburg, Md. Since 1970, this family has not only successfully operated The Ott House restaurant and bar, they’ve turned it into an eating and drinking establishment that’s know well beyond the town limits.

The Beverage Journal recently spoke with Bobby Ott and his sister, Susie Glass. Their father and brother started the business 41 years ago, and they now run the operation with several other family members. Ott remarked, “You can come in here day or night, seven days a week, and there will be a family member here. We’re on the fourth generation. Working here today is my daughter, Alexis. If you look in the kitchen, you’ll find my younger sister, Rosie. Christy is our day manager, and she is also our sister. We’re very fortunate to have family members helping out.”

What’s their secret? Glass just laughed. “A lot of people will tell you that family businesses don’t work,” she said. “But we’ve always been very fortunate and lucky. Growing up, there were nine of us in the household. But we never really quarreled. Oh, I’ve sure we squabbled once in a while. I guess our secret is we just think it’s a wonderful thing to be able to depend on each other. We all still work very hard. It’s not like we’re vacationing every other week. We shut down one week out of the year. And we mainly do that because there are so many family members here that, even though we work together, we still like to all vacation together. This way, we can get away and not have to worry about the business.”

The Ott House shuts down on the week of the Fourth of July each year, and the Otts typically head for the Outer Banks for some much needed rest and relaxation. “While we’re away,” Ott noted, “we often have something big done in here that we couldn’t have done while we are open seven days a week. We had the kitchen painted, for instance.”

But the family doesn’t tinker too much. Their clientele likes The Ott House just the way it is. And what a diverse clientele it is! For one, it pulls from Mount St. Mary’s College in town. In the summertime, Emmitsburg attracts a number of golfers. There are also numerous camps that operate in the mountains nearby, and The Ott House gets a lot of counselors who come in looking for a break. In the winter, outdoor enthusiasts head to nearby Ski Liberty and pack the bar and dining room at night following a day on the slopes. Ott observed, “You’d think that with our business, bad weather would make things slow down. But it seems the colder and the nastier it is, the busier we get here.”

“We also do well with the locals,” Glass noted. “Being that we were born and raised here and our family goes back to the beginning of Emmitsburg, our locals are a part of who we are. We always have people coming in from other parts of the country, and they’ll inevitably say, ‘Oh, you’re so nice,’ because we talk to our customers. And I always tell them, ‘This is where I live. This is my life. If I don’t talk to you, I don’t get to talk to anybody.’”

Ott added, “We love meeting new people, but we also love serving our old friends. We have people who have been coming in the door for 40 years.”

But, by far, the most interesting patrons who frequent The Ott House are not exactly regulars. Well, OK, they are. But they end up being different regulars every week or two. The National Fire Training Academy is located in Emmitsburg, and those firefighters who come to the school for training and refresher courses have adopted The Ott House as sort of their un-official bar and eatery.

Ott confirmed, “It’s become known that if you go to the Academy, you have to come here.” A quick look around the main bar area of the establishment reveals some interesting décor. Encased in glass on the bar itself and in frames on the walls sharing space with bottles of Jack Daniels and Jim Beam are firefighter patches from all over the world. Just a quick look-see at different panels revealed to this reporter patches from Pittsburgh; Los Angeles; and Queensland, Australia. The furthest a firefighter has come to train at the Academy and leave his patch? Antarctica!

“We only put your patch up if you’ve come in here,” Glass declared. “The Fire Academy can turn over 500 men and women every other week. If you’re here for a two-week class or a six-day class, you might come in a couple of days looking for your patch. Most of the time, you do find it.”

Also on display is everything from firefighters’ hats and helmets to badges and pieces of fire equipment. The family also has a piece of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Oklahoma City building that was bombed in 1995 -- all places where firefighters served the public with honor and bravery, with some paying the ultimate price.

Both siblings agreed that the firefighters, college students, and locals who make up their core clientele recognize the hard work they and their relatives put into the business on a daily basis. They appreciate the kind, personalized service and feel at home inside The Ott House’s old walls (the building itself dates back to the late 1700s).

Glass credits their father, originally a painter by trade, with much of their collective work ethic. “Our dad always taught us to work our business, and that’s what we’ve always done. I work as a cook, I bartend, I wait tables. Bobby does the same thing. We scrub floors, we do whatever we have to do alongside our workers. It keeps you involved with your customers. We have seating for 200 for dinner, and there will be four of us standing in the kitchen working -- sometimes five -- and it can get very cramped and very hot. But we do it.”

Ott added, “You have to love it. I mean, we’ve spent probably 75 percent of our adult lives inside here. Dad always said, ‘Don’t be afraid of a little hard work.’ He also said, ‘Why pay somebody else to do it if you can do it yourself?’ So, we do as much as we can ourselves.”

They’ve also been successful by knowing when to go against the grain and defy conventional business wisdom. Take, for instance, the two free shuttle buses the family operates. “They’ve become known as the ‘Drunk Bus,’” Glass acknowledged, a bit sheepishly. “I think we bought our first van in 1980. Some friends of mine who were in the business didn’t think it was a very good idea, because we were taking on the added responsibility of getting people home. But we have a lot of college students. They drink, and they need to get back to campus. Back in the day, they would hitchhike or put 10 people in a car. Well, you don’t do that anymore. This is the safest thing. Also, when people come to the Fire Academy, they don’t have transportation. They’re visiting. They get bussed from the airport. So, we indeed have two vans now.”

Glass has worked at the Ott House since she was 17. Her brother has had a job there since he was 11. Ott commented, “We’ve been in business so long, our name itself brings in the customers. Everybody knows us when you come to this area. We get handed down. There was a guy here a little earlier today from Memphis whose name was Robbie. He was attending the Fire Academy. His father had attended the Academy, and he told him to come here. We have college kids coming in here now, and they’ll tell us their parents used to come in here all of the time. We’ve become generational.”

Glass added, “I’ll be in an airport, and somebody will tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, you’re Susie from the Ott House.’ I’ll look at them surprised. And they’ll say, ‘I know you don’t know who I am, but my son graduated from Mount Saint Mary’s. We would come in for lunch, and I recognize you!’ Our T-shirts are big, too. We always give somebody a T-shirt if they’re going somewhere far away, and we’ll say, ‘Just wear it! Just wear it! Somebody will come up and say something.’”

But even with such a reputation, this family of proprietors still employ many of the same marketing and promotions that other bars, restaurants, and taverns offer. The Ott House sponsors a local Little League team every year, for instance. Live music is a big draw on weekends. And there is usually some kind of food and/or drink special every night. On the evening this reporter visited, it was “Wings and Yeungs.” Ott elaborated, “Our chicken wings are half-price, and we offer $2 pints of Yuengling. As you can imagine, we sell a tremendous amount of beer here. When the college kids are back in town, Wednesday nights are their night. Whatever beer is on special, they drink it.”

But you can’t spend more than a few minutes in The Ott House and not have your thoughts go to the firefighters who pass through its doors week in and week out from all over. It’s also become a place where those who have fallen in the line of duty become the most honored clientele.

Ott concluded, “Guys who have died, we have their helmets. We’ve got their jackets. Their wives and spouses will bring their stuff here. We have a framed license tag. This lady came in the door one day. I could tell she had never been here before. She was looking around and looking around, and I asked, ‘Can I help you?’ And she said, ‘Well, my husband died, and I’m here for the weekend. He never got to go to the Fire Academy, and he really wanted to. Even more so, his wish was to come to the Ott House.’ She had his fireman’s license plate framed and she gave it to me to keep, and she said, ‘He finally made it here. He’s here now. When I leave, you can do whatever you want with it. But he’s here now.’”