ASHEVILLE - Amy Beard loves her lobster.

She's betting a lot of money that others in the mountains will share her passion for the crustacean delicacy from Maine, 1,000 miles away from Western North Carolina.

"When you ask about starting a lobster restaurant, a lot of people look at you like you're crazy," Beard said.

Beard has no experience in the food business. She has never even worked as a waitress. But she does bring her business savvy as a former software executive in Silicon Valley and enough stock options with which to write her own future.

"Are you really sure about this?" Jan Derr asked when he first heard her idea for a new restaurant for downtown Asheville.

"I wanted to make sure she was serious," said Derr who's done woodwork for several restaurants. "But she's very intelligent, and she's got it together."

Beard gathered a team of Asheville professionals to design and build the business of her dreams.

And from what was only an idea last summer, her dream plus about $1.1 million in investment has grown into The Lobster Trap, a restaurant set to open this week on Patton Avenue, where Maine lobsters and seafood will be flown in fresh to the mountains, to tempt local appetites as well as tourists.

Education of an entrepreneur

Along the way, Beard ignored the common myth that new restaurants are almost guaranteed to fail in their first year.

"It shouldn't be rocket science," she said, but she had to quickly educate herself about her new business.

She thought $200,000 might be enough to open an eatery, but she was turned down when she first approached the Grove Arcade about leasing space for a restaurant.

"That was the best thing that could have happened," she said.

She did her homework and began talking to people around town, especially members of the Asheville Independent Restaurants Association.

"The No. 1 piece of advice I got was 'buy your own space so you have an exit strategy,'" Beard said. "The up-fit is so expensive that if you don't own the space, you're just giving your money away."

But that advice doubled her initial stake at once. She found a 3,000-foot space on Patton Avenue and paid $400,000, but she figured it was still the cost of residential space in the downtown.

"It looked like a good investment," she said.

Beard also invested in the talent who could turn that space into a new restaurant. She found her general manager in Tres Hundertmark, who had been a chef at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., and headed casino restaurants in Biloxi, Miss., overseeing staffs of 110 workers.

Designing a successful restaurant is as much about focus as food, Hundertmark said.

"What happens with a lot of restaurants is the chef builds only on his reputation, but you can't deposit passion in the bank. You have to make smart business decisions, rather than artistic decisions," he said. "You can't put things on the menu just because you like them, but your customers don't."

Beard and Hundertmark want to tempt local palates with fresh seafood, steamed or grilled as it's prepared in the casual lobster shacks that dot the coast of New England like barbecue joints in the South.

It takes a team

While Hundtermark worked on the food, Beard recruited more professionals to handle other details.

"Amy is really sharp. Instead of trying to do it herself and think she would be saving money, she found the right team," said Patti Glazer of Glazer Architecture.

Beard calls Glazer the "Code Queen," able to steer contractor Rick Fleming and engineer Jerome Hay through the intricacies of building a commercial kitchen with vents and floor drains in an occupied building.

Derr and his Place Ways Woodworking studio came on board to create a classy yet casual atmosphere with his detailed craftsmanship. The theme of The Lobster Trap is where the mountains meet the sea, harking to the famous trail that crosses North Carolina from the Blue Ridge to the Outer Banks.

To create a boatlike bar, Derr looked over maritime magazines. He picked out native white oak and chose nice warm tones for the color. "It's very dramatic with a lot of compound curves," he said.

Beard, 33, fell in love with Asheville the first time she drove her RV through town about three years ago. A whitewater enthusiast and avid outdoorswoman, she was drawn to the mountains, while the downtown reminded her of her native Portland, Maine. She pulled into the Renaissance Asheville hotel parking lot and walked down to Beverly-Hanks to buy the first house she found on the market. She taught for a year at Asheville High School, then looked again at her options.

She had the resources to invest in most any business, but she wanted to provide a fun place for people to gather, eat and enjoy.

"Asheville is a great place to open a business. Everybody you talk to is really appreciative being here. We feel very lucky to live here," she said.

Asheville is whetting its appetite for good lobster, Hundertmark believes, as The Lobster Trap got good notices at culinary events around town this fall and winter.

"I think everybody is ready for us to open."

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Amy Beard, proprietor of The Lobster Trap, is bucking the notion that most new restaurants are doomed to fail in the first year.

The NBC reality show "The Restaurant" touted the supposed fact that 90 percent of new eateries will go belly up within months, but researchers find no evidence of such failure.

A three-year study by Ohio State University researchers found that just more than half the new restaurants failed in Columbus, Ohio, from 1996 to 1999.

A 1991 study by hospitality professors at Michigan State University and Cornell University found a failure rate of 57 percent over three years, and up to 70 percent after a decade.

That's still a high risk, but no where near the conventional wisdom that 9 out of 10 restaurants will be cooked within a few months.

- Dale Neal

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JOHN FLETCHER/Staff Photographer

Amy Beard, owner of the Lobster Trap, moves a table in the new kitchen as she prepares for the new restaurant opening in downtown Asheville.

John Fletcher/Staff Photographer

Amy Beard, center, offers a lobster bisque and seafood pot pie to Judge Michael Parker, left, and Charles Nesbitt, right , at the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce's 13th annual Culinary Showcase in February at the Grove Park Inn.

JOHN FLETCHER/Staff Photographer

Amy Beard works with Gabe Aucott on the new bar shaped like a boat, which graces The Lobster Trap restaurant that will open on Patton Avenue.

SPECIAL TO THE CITIZEN-TIMES

Tres Hundertmark, left, lobster boat captain Tom Martin and Amy Beard enjoy an outing on Martin's boat off Portland, Maine, where the seafood will come for Beard's new restaurant The Lobster Trap, opening up soon in downtown Asheville.

SPECIAL TO THE CITIZEN-TIMES

Chef Tres Hundertmark gets a feel for the Maine waters where lobster will be caught and flown fresh to Asheville for his cooking at The Lobster Trap.

Web Extra chatter

For a photo gallery of Amy Beard catching lobsters in Maine and at The Lobster Trap restaurant, see this story at CITIZEN-TIMES.com.