Restaurant dream becomes Sure Thing at Willits

Scott Picard thought he had a sure thing in the fall when he moved back to the Roaring Fork Valley with his family and opened a restaurant at Willits Town Center. Four months later, it sure looks like he was right.

Picards Sure Thing restaurant draws a steady mix of retail clerks, construction workers and office folk during weekday lunches, and its a magnet for families with kids and couples out for an evening date.

Hes built the better burger and craft beer place purely by word of mouth and with high visibility in the Parkside building of bustling Willits. Sure Thing is a few doors down from Starbucks.

Picard provides proof that a person can succeed when they switch directions in a career and pursue their passion. He started his working career as a bus boy at a long-gone Aspen restaurant in the early 1980s. A love of skiing lured him to High Alpine restaurant, where George and Gwyn Gordon recognized his talents as a barker the person who collects orders from customers and barks them out to the cooks. It takes a certain flamboyance to do it right, and an ease with people. Picard possesses both.

Nevertheless, he got out of the restaurant business when he left Aspen for the real world. He owned and operated a graphics business in Los Angles, commuting back and forth from Hawaii. By 2005, he was ready for a change and yearned to get back in the hospitality industry. The recession nixed the idea of getting into hotels, but Picard had an opportunity to acquire a 380-square-foot kitchen that soon made its mark by offering gourmet tacos sold out of a window. Word-of-mouth soon had hordes coming to the small commercial area where the taco stand was located. Customers would pester the other operators about the whereabouts of The Window. The restaurant gained a name by default.

Thats when I knew I was probably born to be in food hospitality, Picard said.

The taco stand evolved into Sure Thing at Lahaina, Hawaii. The restaurant was known for its high quality, grass-fed beef from cows raised on Maui.

Scott and his wife, Tammy, decided in 2013 that they wanted to move to the Roaring Fork Valley to raise their girls. They closed the Maui restaurant and set their sights on Willits. Its the latest entry into what Picard calls the better burger category. It includes The Grind, in Glenwood Springs, Fat Belly Burgers, in Carbondale, and CP Burger, in Aspen.

Picard said he never seriously entertained thoughts of opening his restaurant in Aspen. Offseasons are too brutal, he said, and rent would make it impossible to serve a $6.95 burger.

Picard vowed well before he opened that Sure Thing would be affordable as well as clean and comfortable with delicious food. Unlike many restaurant operators who discover they cant keep prices as low as they planned once they open, Picard has kept to his word. The menu features a slightly larger-than-quarter-pound burger with grass-fed, no-hormone beef from 7X Ranches in Hotchkiss. It remains priced at $6.95.

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Restaurant dream becomes Sure Thing at Willits