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Business & Tech

Office Reinvented to Feel Like Home

Now under new management, the Bridgewater location of The Office is chock full of changes.

As the plethora of cooking and restaurant reality shows can attest, the shelf life for half of all new restaurants is just a scant three years.

While a great many factors can determine the success or failure of a restaurant, Villa Enterprises Management is one organization in the food service industry that seems to have gotten the success recipe right.

Over the past year, Villa acquired The Office Beer Bar and Grille on Route 22, as well as additional Office properties in Cranford, Summit, Westfield, Ridgewood and Montclair. All the properties were relaunched in mid-November.

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The restaurants fit into Villa’s full-service restaurant division—essentially sit-down dining establishments with unique character. The Villa also has quick-service restaurants that offer burgers and pizza, and there are 159 restaurant properties in total under the company's management.  

The Bridgewater Office location is, of course, full service, and is indicative of Villa’s approach to creating or reinventing local restaurants.

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“What we do is go into a location and we find out what the community needs and work with the local contractors to make the restaurant what it needs to be for the community,” said Kathleen Janssen, a manager with Villa.

Janssen said that the vision for the Office properties came from Villa’s owners, Anthony and Ben Scotto. 

“They wanted to give the restaurant back to the community,” Janssen said.

The majority of the Office locations have been around for more than 25 years, Janssen said. And as such, they are staples in the community and reflect the character of each location, she said.

“The Bridgewater location is a place for intimate dining in the back and it’s very focused on the bar area because we learned that a lot of people that come in are very bar centric," she said. "There are a lot of people who enjoy not only eating, but eating while sitting at the bar and watching sports."

Janssen said new TVs and tables were added to the bar area, and the drink menu was revamped. The location boasts more than 60 beers with 21 on tap. There is even a beer brewed by New Jersey-based Ramstein Breweries for the Office called Office Amber Lager.

“We know a lot of the locals who grew up going there, and they still go there today for happy hour,” Janssen said. “We listened to them and we asked them what they were looking for.”

The Bridgewater location has come a long way since it was first reviewed by Villa.

“You would drive by on Route 22 and wouldn’t even know that it’s an open restaurant,” Janssen said. “It really looked beaten-down. It hadn’t had any tender loving care.”

Today, The Office in Bridgewater is a vibrant restaurant with a warm atmosphere. In addition to the aesthetic changes completed in the renovation, there are more than 25 new additions to the menu.

Some of those new menu items include handmade Grilled Pizzas, The Office’s signature Soft Pretzels with Cheddar Bacon Ale Dip, an ISO Burger—inside out with the cheddar cheese cooked into the center—and great new steaks and seafood.  

“What our company tries to do is find locations and build locations with this need for something different than the normal fast food or quick service type restaurants,” Janssen said. “All our properties are held by family, and that’s what we try to give back to the community. We hope that they're places people can go to and have them feel like home.”

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