Cafe for sale: $100 to the right buyer
MILWAUKEE - For anyone who loved the National cafe's gourmet coffee and organic menu, it was inconceivable the place was for sale for just $100.
CBS News national correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports the lucky buyer is 35-year-old Nell Benton - an out of work local check who was unemployed. "It's completely changed my life, completely," she said.
It's also a dream Benton's had since she was seven years old. She remembers "writing menus and playing with my Holly Hobby oven, setting things on fire, yep!"
On deals this good, there's always a catch. Here's there was a big one. Benton had to promise to keep the National as is: keep the staff, keep the name, buy local and stay organic. She wanted to do all of that anyway. But that still leaves one question. Who sells a restaurant for $100?
More about the $100 cafe saleMichael Diedrick, the seller and the man who built the National, lives and owns a website design company two doors down from the cafe. He lost $50,000 on the sale, but he calls it a business decision. "The idea of a $100 restaurant is to really find the right kind of owner."
The National, Diedrick explains, is the economic anchor of his neighborhood. It's an area of Milwaukee where the ballet school is blocks away from the soup kitchen. Lose the National to an owner who might change it, and he loses the neighborhood.
"Is it pie in the sky to think you're going to open a restaurant and build a community," Diedrick asks. "Absolutely. It is, however, a start. And that's what i was going for."
And with that Diedrick got his owner and Nell got her restaurant, for just $100.
