For a few days, at least, it looked as if a parents` dream was cooking on Halsted Street.
”It started with a comment from one of my headwaiters, who has two children,” says Linda Terczak, co-owner of Terczak`s, 2635 N. Halsted St.
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”He said that one of the main reasons that young parents don`t eat out more often is that they can`t find a babysitter quickly on, say, a Tuesday night.”
Terczak began thinking. She and husband John could rent the adjacent storefront, hire a kid-loving crew and provide babysitting for customers. The parents could drop off the kids, then skip next door for a quiet meal-just the two of them.
”It sounded great,” Linda Terczak says, ”but we ran into a mumbo jumbo of laws and licenses and rent and insurance and having to pay for the staff even if we`re not busy.
”We`d love to do it,” she says, ”but it`s just not practical.”
Probably just what those parents said when they contemplated that first child. Meanwhile, in Denver, the concept has already taken off. There, at a restaurant appropriately called A Piece of Quiet, parents can bring their offspring, and still dine in serenity.
While grown-ups settle in for continental cuisine, child-care workers feed and tend to their tots in a separate area where they remain visible to parents via a one-way mirror.
”It`s very comforting to them,” says co-owner Linda Rock, of the stream of parents who have flocked to the 28-table eatery. Reservations even have come in from throughout the country.
Yet instead of planning for an on-site expansion, Brock says she instead intends to franchise the concept. And it may find a home here: She`s already received inquiries from would-be franchisees in Chicago.