Brian Bessler: Joliet Area Bar & Restaurant Guide At 5 Years Strong

JOLIET — Aside from Joliet Patch, which now has more than 84,000 Facebook followers, Brian Bessler's Joliet Area Bar & Restaurant Guide has become one of the region's most-followed Facebook pages, now topping 64,700 followers.

Bessler, a Joliet native who works as a realtor at Karges Realty, one of Joliet's long-time businesses, just celebrated the five-year anniversary of the launch of his Joliet restaurant group, which he said draws more than 1 million visitors every month.

Last week, Joliet Patch met with Bessler for a question-and-answer interview at the Louie's Waffle House at the corner of McDonough Street and Larkin Avenue to talk about the Joliet Area Bar Restaurant & Guide and its impact on Joliet.

Joliet Patch: "Brian, tell me about the history of the food and restaurant group. It's been five years, the five-year anniversary, what was the original reason that you started the group to begin with?"

Bessler: "The group started on St. Patrick's Day in 2020 right as the (COVID-19-related) closures started. I noticed that a lot of friends that were business owners maybe had a social media presence, but didn't use it as they could to be able to support their businesses when the closures occurred. I had seen a post from a friend, Miguel (Villarreal) with Jody's only at the time, that said he wasn't sure how he was going to continue. There was no traffic. He didn't have a way to reach his consumers, and just wasn't sure about the future of the restaurant. And at the same time, the Trafton family had just opened The Dock (at Inwood) and due to the restrictions and being a part of the Joliet Park District, they had to close their restaurant completely and they started getting meals together for the nurses at St. Joe's. And I just thought that would be really cool to get something together that would help promote the businesses and help reach out to all our first responders in the area and try to work with the community and get our community through all these challenges."

Joliet Patch: "Right now, numbers wise, how many thousands of people are part of the group?"

Bessler: "Right now, we are at nearly 65,000. With an average of about 1.2 million views per month, all in support of our local restaurants. And that's because of the amazing users that we have in the group and contributors that really help to do that."

Joliet Patch: "Being positive has always been your thing. You've never wanted this to be 'a slam a restaurant because I had cold food or lousy service' page."

Bessler: "Our intention was always to try to be positive about the restaurants. I always stress that if you truly have a problem with a restaurant, call the manager, nobody wants you to have a bad experience. And if you truly have a bad experience, there's forums such as Yelp and Google Reviews that allow for that. I just want to try to keep things positive and try to keep things upbeat."

Joliet Patch: "Do you have a lot of people or some people that try to still post that or just argue with you and say 'I should be able to say this restaurant is lousy or my food was cold'?"

Bessler: "Yeah, we do, and I always just go back to the original mission and just let them know that though there are forums for it, for expressing those opinions, that's not what the group was ever made for, and I think people respect that for the most part."

Joliet Patch: "I certainly can't name everyone, but which businesses have been some of the shining stars that regularly react and actively engage with people and promote the restaurant in a way that you originally set out when you set this up?"

Bessler: "I always think that Miguel with Jody's and Fritz's Pour House, he always went above and beyond. He really caught on to the idea and how he could get good exposure for his business. During Covid, we started the 'donate a meal' program, that was a program where residents could donate $5 and cooperating restaurants would donate a meal to our first responders. And Miguel would go above and beyond that and match that for each meal. That program generated over 7,000 meals for first responders during the height of the pandemic. And then when the vaccination clinics started, we were able to donate over bottles of water and snacks and stuff for the volunteers at those clinics. So restaurant-wise, I would say Miguel and Tom (Grotovsky) with Curator's Cafe. He's always been a strong contributor. I think he's done really well over the years as far as learning and adapting and promoting his businesses and stuff."

Bessler also explained that brothers Nick and Michael Polimenakos who opened Louie's Waffle House at the former Bob Evans restaurant property in Joliet near Interstate 80 and the Larkin Avenue exit have also been outstanding members of the Joliet Area Bar & Restaurant Guide. "The guys used social media to help their dad in his time of need, and it ended up taking both of them on a different life path. Louie's is definitely a success story and continues build on the opportunities they worked so hard for during the early days of the pandemic."

Joliet Patch: "Do you still feel there are some restaurants or bars around the area, that, for whatever reason, have not caught on or taken advantage of the restaurant group at all?"

Bessler: "I see new businesses pop through every day. I think at this point, we get a lot of Meta traffic from the businesses themselves. When the group first started, a lot of the business owners weren't really aware of how that stuff worked, and now we get businesses that will normally post on their own social media and then just naturally post on ours as well and cross post on it. That was really the idea. It was a place for them to advertise their businesses with a captive audience while avoiding having to pay social media marketing fees."

Joliet Patch: "With 65,000 followers, and them all having access to comment all the time, is it like herding cats now where it's a little more challenging where you have to monitor posts or are there things that are a little more difficult when you have 65,000 people versus 6,000 people?"

Bessler: "Well, I can say that surely we can't moderate every single comment. We do have some A.I. tools that Facebook offers in place to kind of catch stuff if things get reported. And we have an incredible community of users that understand and have been with us for all five years that they know if they just report a post or report a comment that it will be taken down by someone, someone nearly immediately. While it's not perfect, I still feel like it fulfills the original intention of promoting our local businesses and with over a million views every month, it's clearly still relevant, years after the pandemic."

Joliet Patch: "Do you see the group thriving and growing another five years from now?"

Bessler: "I think the initial pace has tapered off, and we've had some copycat groups with different intentions, but I think that overall, people see it as a local resource for the restaurants and bars in the area."

Joliet Patch: "And for you, what's probably your biggest satisfaction looking back on the last five years and the impact that it's made in the community?"

Bessler: "It reassures me that our community is an amazing community that overwhelmingly wants to support our businesses, wants to support our restaurants and have shown that through the support these last five years and continue to do it every single day. I'm probably most proud that when our community needed help, when the community was struggling, our community came together to help, and it was probably one of the most selfless times for our community that I've ever experienced in my life as a lifelong resident in Joliet. It was really awesome to see the support that people did for their community."