Asking price for family-run hotel is $12 million. The marshmallow memories are priceless

In the early days of the Erie Beach Hotel, an iconic hotel and dining establishment in the small town of Port Dover, Ont., the Schneider family served lake-caught pickerel to their guests, alongside their signature celery bread, pickled pumpkin and marshmallow salads.

“When blue pickerel was getting tight,” recalls third generation owner, Andrew Schneider, “and they were catching all this unknown, unusable fish called Lake Erie yellow perch, my grandfather went down to the pier and came back with a bucket of this stuff and said to my grandma, ‘what can we do with this?’” They were basically giving perch away, Andrew says with a shake of his head; nobody wanted it back then.

Today, diners in the Cove Room, Terrace Room and Perch Patio — all part of the Erie Beach Hotel’s much expanded restaurants, with capacity for 850 — continue to enjoy the celery bread, pickled pumpkin and marshmallow salads, Andrew reports. But mostly, they come for the Lake Erie perch.

Tastes evolve, and times change. This spring, Andrew and his wife Pam, owners of the Erie Beach Hotel enterprise — and part-owners, with Andrew’s brother, of The Arbor, a casual eating place famous for its trademarked Golden Glow drink and foot-long hotdogs, plus a mini-golf course, both nearby — are calling it quits. The family businesses in Port Dover are for sale, for an all-in asking price of just under $12 million.

Like many long-time patrons, I’m saddened by the news. The Cove Room is where my grandparents and parents gathered to celebrate milestone anniversaries and birthdays, graduations and engagements. Normally, I recoil from marshmallow in salads; but there, I partake, because the memories are sweet.

The Schneider patriarch and matriarch, Harold and Marjorie, purchased a “beat up” Erie Beach Hotel in 1946, as Andrew tells their story. Before his grandfather went away to the war, to serve in the navy, Andrew explains, “Grandma and he ran a hotel in Kitchener.” His grandmother managed the hotel for the two or three years while his grandfather was at war, but the hotel owners only compensated her as a housekeeper. That injustice precipitated the couple’s move to Dover.

And now, after four generations of Schneiders — owning, operating and continuously improving the Erie Beach property — I’m curious to understand how Andrew and Pam came to the decision to sell a business that’s become such a big part of their family’s and Port Dover’s identity.

“How will people react if these legacy assets are knocked down to make way for lakeshore condominiums?” I ask the couple in our virtual conversation.

“There’s enough space available in Port Dover to build condos,” Andrew assures me, with a smile, “you don’t need to knock this down.” He’s hoping the people who buy the place, “make this 10 times more successful than we have; we want this to succeed and the town to succeed.”

The business employs roughly 100 people, he explains, and “the payroll between here and The Arbour, the tips, the stuff we buy locally, all that affects the local economy in a huge way.”

Their eldest daughter manages the Terrace Room, Pam adds, and there was a lot of pressure on her: “I remember her saying to me … ‘I don’t want to be the one who sells it … the whole town is going to look at me and I’m going to be the one who sells it someday.’”

Andrew and Pam know the decision to sell doesn’t just affect the owners; many of their current employees have been working at the Erie Beach hotel for 20-plus years, Andrew reports. “We had a bartender who was here for 40-something years, our chef was here 40-something years,” he says. “Rose, who still works upstairs, has been over 40 years with us.”

The hospitality business is demanding, Pam explains; the only day of the year the restaurants close is Christmas Day. “And there was a time,” Andrew adds, “when we never closed.”

“We sold out every Christmas,” he reminisces, “and then when dad left it to the staff to decide; ‘You wanna continue to do Christmases or you wanna cut this off?’ And they said, ‘Let’s cut it off.’ Took three years,” Andrew laughs. “We told everybody, ‘OK, next year, we’re cutting this back.’ Cut it from three sittings down to two, down to one, and then none, and that was kind of how Christmas ended here.”

Andrew and his brother Tony lived at the Erie Beach Hotel as young kids, he recalls, “bussing tables for breakfast when we were nine or 10; before that we swept sidewalks and crushed the ice with a big old machine with a handle on the side.”

A century ago, beginning in the Roaring ‘20s, people made the trek to Port Dover to dance to big band music in the ballroom of the Summer Garden. In the 1940s, bands included Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Gene Krupa. In the 1950s, Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks, and after that the Guess Who and Lighthouse played the venue.

The nearby town of Jarvis was also home to a British Commonwealth Air Force base, “so there was a lot of training going on,” for the war effort, says Andrew, “and the guys blowing off steam here in town.” In the rough and tumble of the hotel’s bar, once someone was cut off, you were cut off for life, Pam laughs. “People learned to behave,” she says, “or you didn’t ever get to come back.”

In 2000, Andrew and Pam bought the family business from his parents.

“Perch was tight again, prices were going up, profits were going down,” Andrew recalls, and his mother was “all wound up … asking ‘what do we do if there’s no more perch in Lake Erie?’”

Andrew told his mother: “I’ll put up a for sale sign, or I’ll figure out a way to sell steak, or something, but I’m not tied here.”

Andrew and Pam aren’t leaving Dover anytime soon. Lake Erie is well stocked with perch. But the couple has decided their children can also choose their own path.

He and Pam are attached to the place, Andrew says, “but we shouldn’t dictate to our kids what they want to do with their own lives.”

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