Hungry Bear owners retire after 23 years

SWAN VALLEY – For the past 23 winters, Mike Holmes has been starting a fire every morning at the Hungry Bear Steak House at 6:30 a.m. Every winter he brings in 30 cords of firewood for the Hungry Bear and the Gordon Ranch. This winter he can relax a little bit after he and his wife Sue sold the Swan Valley restaurant and retired July 1.

The Holmes agreed to be successful business owners in the Valley, they had to invest a lot of time in the restaurant, working it and being there. While Mike won't miss starting the fire that early, the Holmes said they will miss all the staff and the locals and visitors that frequented the Hungry Bear.

Gloria Busch built the Hungry Bear in 1977.

"One person could run it," said Sue. "There was a salad bar, beans in a crock and they cooked steaks."

Mike was born and raised near Condon. Prior to owning the Hungry Bear he logged and helped run the Gordon Ranch. Sue moved to Condon from Polson. After they married, she helped Mike with his logging. Sue ran the Cat and Mike cut the trees. They also were caretakers for the Gordon Ranch.

The winter the Holmes logged in seven feet of snow, "I told him he better find me something else to do," said Sue. "It was just awful."

Sue had some nursing training but there were not many employment opportunities in the Swan Valley for her outside of logging or the restaurant business.

The Holmes purchased the Hungry Bear in 1996 with no experience in the restaurant business. Sue said she had never been in a commercial kitchen or even run a till before becoming the restaurant's owner.

"We went into this as blind as bats," said Sue. "It was very scary at first but it went fairly well."

Sue said her personal goal was to run it for 10 years and then retire. For the business, Mike and Sue's goal was to take care of their customers.

"We did whatever we could to please them and make a comfortable, nice atmosphere with good food," said Sue.

Although the Hungry Bear's specialty is steak, they also offered a range of seafood dishes depending on the season. Chicken, prime rib and pizza rounded out the evening menu choices. Mike and Sue also added a full breakfast and lunch menu.

Sue cooked for the first few years along with Janie O'Brien and Linda Styler.

"I can't cook a steak. When someone asks for a rare or medium rare, some of the cooks can just poke their finger and know what it is," said Sue. "I never got that good."

In 1998 they hired the Kaser sisters and have had a few other cooks over the years. Kris was the morning and lunch chef and made all the soups. Shelley was the dinner chef. They were both there for 21 years.

"People would come up here from Missoula to have prime rib [Friday and Saturday nights]. It was top quality meat and cooked well," said Mike. "People would also come a long way for our cheese soup and we had a good salad bar."

"I think the consistency helped. We had enough different kinds of things on the menu that if you wanted to come up three or four weekends in a row you could always get something different," said Sue. "You don't fix anything that isn't broken."

In the early years, they had a lot of live music and sponsored two teams for the area pool league. Even though they had to quit doing the live music because of expense, the pool league continued with teams traveling all the way from Seeley Lake.

The Hungry Bear also hosted weddings, benefits and memorials at no charge for the community. For every benefit the Holmes could remember, Evelyn Jette and others donated a huckleberry pie. It would go for $1,500.

Mike said Roger Donald, a senior editor and publisher for Little, Brown in New York who had a place on Kraft Creek, bought one of the pies and bought cinnamon rolls for $150.

"We ate them before he could ever get to them" said Mike and laughed.

Another of Mike's favorite memories happened at one of the benefits. A big teddy bear was up for auction and Mike's granddaughter Paige really wanted it.

Mike said he was bidding from behind the bar and didn't know who he was bidding against. It turned out to be local Dan Baker.

"It got to $600 and I quit but he knew I wanted it for Paige," said Mike. "He gave it to her and she's still got it. There were a lot of things like that that happened."

Another regular customer Bruce Jansson started the joke of taking a bite out of a burger to go and closing the container back up.

"It had to be someone local and someone he knew," said Sue explaining with a smile.

"Bruce always laughed so hard," said Mike reminiscing. "One night he laughed so hard his false teeth flew across the room."

When they first bought the Hungry Bear, Mike and Sue's grandchildren were little. Sue said there was a big mud pit in the back yard.

"Grandma let them go play in the mud and then we had to take them in the kitchen and wash them off," said Sue and laughed. "There have been a lot of good times."

As their grandchildren grew up, six of the eight worked for them at the Hungry Bear.

"Those kids know how to work now," said Sue. "There are a lot of kids that want a job but they don't know how to put in the hours and the physical effort to do it. You learn that when you are waiting tables and you have every table in the place full and people waiting at the door. You move."

Many of the youth in the valley worked at the Hungry Bear at one point. Sue said they always had such a good time back in the kitchen playing pranks on each other.

"In the summer we had high school kids. When they would leave in the fall we were in big trouble because there was no one to pick it up," said Mike. "From September through the end of hunting season we were struggling."

Sue said another challenge was making sure they kept everything in stock. It was a 20 mile round trip to the Mission Mountains Mercantile and sometimes they did not have what they needed.

"You had to be really careful with the ordering," said Sue. "You just didn't know what the weekend would bring...sometimes you would have 15 people and other times you would have 40."

The Holmes agreed that the recession in the last decade really affected their business.

"Before the recession, we would have them waiting in the hallway for a table, especially in the summer," said Sue. "We never did come back like we did before then."

Mike said that logging got too hard and many people left the valley. When he was on the Swan Valley School board in the late 1970s, there were 96 students. Now there are 32.

However, the Holmes still kept the loyal customer base and continued to be a destination for visitors.

"It was a place to get together and visit and yack," said Mike. "They always met people there."

Thirteen years after Sue's initial goal for retirement, the Holmes sold the business to a couple from Missoula. They had the restaurant on the market for more than five years.

"We just got too old. When you get to be 75 you just can't keep up anymore," said Sue.

She added, "It was an expensive place. I think anyone that had that kind of money and didn't live here...I don't think anyone wanted to work that hard. It's a seven-day-a-week job."

For the rest of the summer the Holmes will be haying and fixing fence on the Gordon Ranch. Then they hope to be able to relax a little more in their retirement. They hope to be able to travel to see their granddaughter Paige play basketball her senior year in college, something they have done as much as possible to see their grandchildren.

The Holmes appreciated the financial support they received from Tony Kessler and Donald and all the people that worked for them over the years.

"We had a lot of good people," said Mike. "I'm really going to miss it."