Rich Donovan, a New Jersey resident who has a second home in the area, closed this week on the purchase of the Adirondack roadside landmark restaurant, known for its lobster clambake, from longtime owner Eddie Yanchitis. Donovan paid $500,000 for it, according to a deed filed Wednesday in the Essex County clerk’s office.

Donovan has been coming to the Adirondacks since the 1960s, when his family would stay at the Colgate University Camp on Upper Saranac Lake. Tail O’ the Pup is one of the places they’d stop during those visits, Donovan said.

“I remember coming up as a kid in the back of the station wagon for Cal Howard’s hot dogs,” he said.

Donovan bought a house in Saranac Inn 16 years ago, and he spends a lot of time here snowmobiling and enjoying the outdoors. He recently retired from running an ambulance company in Morristown, New Jersey.

New Tail O’ the Pup owner Rich Donovan, right, talks with his business partner Heather Moynihan about the progress of renovations to the Ray Brook restaurant earlier this week. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

In his new business venture here, Donovan is partnering with Heather Moynihan of Saranac Lake, who’s worked in the restaurant business for 18 years, including a stint as a Tail O’ the Pup waitress.

“We were looking to start a small business up here,” donovan said. “She said, ‘Well, if you really want to spend some money, I heard the Tail of the Pup is for sale.’ To be honest, we were looking to start smaller, like a commercial laundry for great camps. But she said that, and it intrigued me, and that’s how it all started.”

Donovan and Moynihan first approached Yanchitis last summer, roughly a week after he had listed the property for sale. After some back-and-forth negotiations, Donovan said they worked out the framework of the deal last fall, although it didn’t close until this week.

Tail O’ the Pup dates to 1937 and was originally owned by Cal Howard, who ran it as a seasonal roadside stand offering “charcoal red hots, beef burgers and steak sandwiches,” according to a 1952 Enterprise advertisement. Howard also operated the property’s rental cabins, known then as Evergreen Camps, which are still part of the business.

Yanchitis bought Tail O’ the Pup from Howard in 1989. Now 62, Yanchitis said this week he thought he might pass the business on to his sons, but they’re attending college in Florida and aren’t interested in taking it on. After seeing some of his same-age friends retire, he decided it was time to sell.

He said he thinks the business will be in good hands.

“Richie seemed like a really hard worker with a great personality,” Yanchitis said. “I really liked him a lot. He’s been in there spending a lot of money doing a lot of work renovating the cabins and parts of the restaurant that needed it.”

Yanchitis admits that he still hasn’t completely processed the fact that he’s no longer running the business, which he would have been doing now if he hadn’t sold it.

“For the last 28 years, I’ve been in there pretty much from 10 until 10, seven days a week, June, July and August,” he said. “It is in my soul, that place. The day after I sold it, I went to town twice but forgot what I was doing, walking around in a fog. I’m still in a fog.”

Tail O’ the Pup is one of the last remaining businesses of its kind in the Adirondacks.

In the 1950s and ’60s, roadside restaurants, cabin rentals and small motels dotted the highways of the Park. At one time, Ray Brook was home to a colony of six or seven different rental cabin businesses. Although most are now long gone, Yanchitis thinks Tail O’ the Pup still has an allure that will continue to attract people.

“The campfire, the music, the outdoors, the huge white pine trees, the combination of the cabins with the restaurant, which really hasn’t changed much since the 1930s — I think people like that kind of nostalgia,” he said. “It’s hard to find these days.”

Donovan called Yanchitis a “tremendous businessman” who was able to capture the area’s tourist business. The Tail’s large outside covered seating area is often packed with visitors in July and August, when it draws big crowds from annual events like the Lake Placid Horse Show, the Summit Classic Lacrosse Tournament and the Can-Am Rugby Tournament.

Donovan said he will continue to cater to those visitors, but he also wants to draw in more local people. He said he reviewed credit card slips from prior years of business and found an “extremely small percentage” of local addresses.

“Our idea is, this is a great place, and just tourists shouldn’t enjoy it,” he said. “We also want local people to come. My goal is to get 1,000 to 2,000 locals in here each year. We’re going to offer a local discount of 20 percent up through July and after Labor Day.”

He added, “It’s a good business, tourism, but I live locally, and my kids grow up here, and I want to see the community coming in.”

Over the last few weeks, even before the deal closed, Donovan’s crews have been hard at work cleaning, renovating and remodeling parts of the restaurant and its 13 rental cabins.

“What we decided to do was start fresh,” Donovan said. “We took out the floors. Every appliance, every table, every soda line, every beer line, the prep kitchen, a secondary kitchen — everything in here that touches food has been removed and cleaned and scraped or is new and has been inspected by the Department of Health.

“Heather’s gone through every cabin with a crew of four or six girls and scrubbed the floorboards, carpets, pulled bathroom floors up and replaced them.

“We want clean facilities, good food, cold drinks and a great time.”

Tail O’ the Pup’s menu will largely be the same for the first year of Donovan and Moynihan’s operations, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some changes.

“We’re going to make sure we get the prep where it used to be with a lot of love in the food, and increase the portions back to what they used to be,” Donovan said. “Our sides aren’t going to come in plastic containers. We’re going to put them on your plate. They won’t be pre-done. We’re going to bring it back to good, honest roadside barbecue.”

“The quality is going to be different,” Moynihan added. “There’s a few specials we’re going to try, and maybe make some menu changes for next season. But it’s still barbecue and lobster clambakes.”

It takes a staff of about 40 people to run the business. Some are returning employees, like chef Mark McCabe. The Tail will also have a contingent of young foreign workers, as it has in years past, through the J-1 exchange program. Eighteen are scheduled to arrive soon from places like Turkey and the Philippines.

Yet Donovan said the use of that program may be scaled back over time if he can find more local workers.

“We didn’t close (on the sale) soon enough, so the applications for the foreign workers went through (Yanchitis’) company,” he said. “They’re coming in. We’re going to honor that. But this is a test year. We want to try and get more local people to work here.”

Tail O’ the Pup is scheduled to open for the season May 19.

Donovan admits things are pretty hectic right now, but he’s confident the business will soon be ready to welcome back its old customers and hopefully find some new ones, too.

“It will be different and shining and ready by then,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of money. Now, it’s time to get some people in here. We’re almost ready to roll.”