How a burger joint became a flash point in the fight for Coral Gables’ identity
For the last 27 years, Robert “Bob” Maguire, 85, would come to work every day, don a white apron and serve up hamburgers on the “best grill in town” at Coral Gables’ famous cash-only diner on the Granada Golf Course.
But after multiple lease extensions and rent forgiveness opportunities, uncertainty has permeated the retro-style diner, which Maguire has rented from the city for the last three decades.
With Maguire and restaurant manager Rita Tennyson recently accepting a month-to-month lease that ends March 31, the city is asking would-be future operators to renovate the place, which shows signs of aging.
“It’s their way of having me on the hook,” Maguire said of the month-to-month lease in an interview with the Miami Herald outside his restaurant.
The fate of the city’s unpretentious eatery — now the subject of competing visions by would-be successors to Maguire’s legacy — represents another moment in an ongoing debate over whether the city should embrace change or preserve the traditional flavor of Coral Gables.
Hoping to save the restaurant they love, longtime customers have raised about $46,000 to help finance a plan by Tennyson to assume control of the restaurant. Architects, lawyers and planners have stepped forward to offer their services in constructing a plan for an updated space, and fans have shared expressions of love that are plastered on the glass wall separating Burger Bob’s from the golf course pro shop.
“Burger Bob’s is like coming home,” reads one of more than 100 notes with red heart stickers.
Meanwhile, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Chairman Rodney Barreto is also offering to spruce up the place under the terms of a new, higher-grossing lease after Maguire rejected an earlier offer to buy him out.
“The inevitable is coming. Mr. Maguire is not getting any younger,” said Richard Barbara, the chief operations officer of the Barreto Hospitality Group, which has also taken interest in the Coral Gables Country Club across the street. “The place has been there since God spoke to Moses.”
A troubled year
Maguire took over the restaurant, originally called the Granada Snack Shop in 1994, he said. Alfred Smith, a longtime Coral Gables resident and renowned ophthalmologist, coined the name “Burger Bob’s” shortly after. Outside the restaurant is a bench dedicated to Smith, known to the community as the “mayor of Burger Bob’s.” He died in 2018.
A Marine and Bargaintown, New Jersey, native, Maguire moved to Miami in the late 1960s. He worked in food service for decades, running kitchens at the former Miami Heart Institute and other spots around town before retiring. His retirement lasted about six weeks before he was back on his feet. A friend told him the restaurant at the historic Granada Golf Course, the oldest 9-hole course in the state, was up for bid.
“I couldn’t sit still,” he said.
Maguire, whose burger order is a medium-rare patty with tomato, onion and “lots of ketchup,” commutes every day from Miami Shores, where he lives with his wife Mary Lou, chihuahua Roxy and terrier Mickey. The restaurant is now open Tuesday through Saturday due to a staffing shortage, but it once operated seven days a week, 365 days a year, he said.
As is the case for many restaurateurs, the pandemic hurt Maguire, and he fell behind on his rent to the city.
In January, after already reducing the base monthly rent from $3,000 to $1,000, the City Commission agreed to defer $20,280.26 for rent that was due in 2020, about six months’ worth, through August to help keep the business running.
Then in June, the city put out its first request for proposals to take over Maguire’s lease, expressing interest in a “chef-driven restaurant concept” with operators who will have direct involvement with the restaurant’s day-to-day operations. The city set the base rent at $5,000 per month and required a complete renovation of the restaurant space.
The only two bidders were Rodney Barreto — an influential lobbyist — and Tennyson, a 45-year-old chef who runs the day-to-day operations of the restaurant.
In August, the commission voted to extend the lease from Aug. 31 until Dec. 31. After that, the venue was to be leased on a month-to-month basis until the city found a permanent solution. Members of the public stood up to speak at the meetings, urging the commission to extend the lease another year or six months for Maguire and Tennyson.
“Extending leases because we like somebody or because they are our friend doesn’t really paint us in the best light,” Coral Gables Vince Lago said in response to residents during a July meeting.
In September, commissioners voted to require Maguire pay the back rent by Dec. 31.
On Dec. 19, the city started over and put out a second request for proposals to garner bidders to renovate the restaurant and take over operations, with the hope “to secure greater interest in the operation of the Granada Golf Course restaurant,” Martha Pantin, the city spokeswoman, wrote in an email.
“There is no favored bidder,” she wrote. “The city must always act as responsible stewards of public funds. Mr. Maguire and/or any interested party is welcome to submit a proposal.”
The tension feels familiar
Barreto has had interest in Maguire’s place for months, and offered to buy the original operator out of his lease and hire all of his employees at their current salaries. Maguire said he declined their request immediately.
“They couldn’t do it, not in the same way,” he said.
Residents in the community say the offer sounds similar to that at the Coral Gables Country Club across the street, where Barreto Hospitality Group’s bid to run the club was rejected earlier this year by the city. Barreto proposed a similar takeover and a promise to inject millions into the aging property.
Barreto, a political fundraiser who helped Miami land Super Bowl LIV, is interested in operating both the Country Club and Burger Bob’s with a goal of completing one unified construction project in the spring of 2022. His partner, Barbara, said the group will wait until the city makes a decision, though “waiting was not our preference.”
The first bids for Burger Bob’s
In a 12-page unsolicited bid hand-delivered to Coral Gables City Manager Peter Iglesias in February 2021, Barreto laid out a first-class renovation “sparing no expense.” The new “Burger Bob’s on the green” would embody Central Park’s “Tavern on the Green,” his firm wrote, with $800,000 in renovations that would include a new kitchen and sleek, modern interiors, expanded patio with cabanas and umbrellas and “significant landscaping.”
Barreto described it as a “retro/vintage-style neighborhood diner” with menu items like burgers, salads, milkshakes and ice cream and classic breakfast items, all priced under $10. His group highlighted its many chef-driven restaurant concepts around Miami-Dade County, noting that foods purchased or made in its commercial bakery in Doral could be used at Burger Bob’s, passing along cost savings to customers.
Barreto pitched a 20-year lease with minimum rent of $5,000 per month. The city would also get 3% of gross sales for the percentage rent, with a cap of $150,000 per year.
The city put out its first request for proposals in June, and in August, Barreto’s group submitted another bid closely resembling the unsolicited one.
This time, however, Barreto wasn’t alone.
Tennyson, a 26-year veteran of the restaurant who owns R Catering and Events with her daughter, Saesha, decided to bid to keep Maguire’s restaurant closer to its original form. She pitched herself as a longtime Burger Bob’s employee who knows “the rhythm” of the neighborhood.
“It is not our concept to compete with … or to become a ‘destination dining’ enterprise that competes with restaurants in downtown Coral Gables,” she wrote in the bid.
She said under her management, the restaurant, “Burger Bob’s and Rita” would accept credit cards and take online payment. A refreshed menu includes moderate price increases, and adds salads, gourmet drip coffee and cookies, according to a sample menu submitted with the proposal.
Tennyson pitched a 9-year lease with $60,000 in renovations to make the space more accessible.
Renderings show a bright, diner-style restaurant with subway tile counters and retro-inspired seating and signage. Tennyson also included copies of hand-signed petitions and Change.org campaigns to “save Burger Bob’s.”
“The community has been amazing,” Tennyson said. “To me, it’s between going to work for this person or trying to bid on a space that I love ... I would have never in a million years expect for this to be happening right now.”
Now, under the city’s second solicitation, Tennyson, Barreto and anyone else who wants to take up the lease will have until Jan. 10 to submit bids.
Inside Burger Bob’s, where the concerns about looming changes are literally written on the wall, customers on Monday hoped that the city will keep control of the restaurant in the hands of its current management.
Marlin Ebbert, a resident who has stepped up to help organize the pledge drive, said while there has been plenty of heartburn in the city over the Coral Gables Country Club lease, “Rita and Bob just kept doing what they did well.”
“I would hope the city would reward them,” she said. “Why replace what’s there? I just don’t understand..”
Sitting in a chair outside the restaurant, looking through the window at the wall of well-wishers, Maguire took a deep breath and gave a nod to his customers.
“It’s their place,” he said.
This story was originally published December 21, 2021 at 12:02 PM.