River House Cafe in Charleroi celebrates a decade in business
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Observer-Reporter
Mike and Lori Coury, owners of River House Cafe in Charleroi, are shown in this 2018 photo.
It’s a typically busy Wednesday evening at the River House Café in Charleroi. Owners Michael and Lori Coury are busy making sure their staff is on point while visiting and chatting with regular customers and new faces alike. It’s hard to imagine that neither one of them was in the restaurant business 15 years ago. It was only in 2004 that Michael retired from the police force in Whitehall and decided to try investing in real estate. “The realtor brought us to Charleroi, and we purchased a duplex,” Lori remembers. “While my husband was driving through town, he found a building for sale, and that’s when he decided to open the pizza business there.”
Michael’s father had owned a pizza shop years earlier, and that inspired him to open Salatino’s Pizza. The couple was living in South Park, and Lori was working as a corporate sales representative. By 2008, she needed a change and learned the owner of the old Miller’s Department Store building, down the street at 506 McKean Ave., was interested in selling it. The Courys bought it and began renovating it to become the River House Café, using as much handcrafted local wood and finishes as they could to create a rich but cozy interior.
River House Café’s doors opened Feb. 6, 2008. That meant the couple was running two restaurants.
“It was overwhelming,” Lori admits. “Financially, it started not making sense to us because you have two of everything: two sets of bills, two set of employees, and my husband was running back and forth between the two.”
By the end of October, they decided to combine the two and moved Salatino’s staff, pizza oven and equipment to the River House Café. They’ve been operating two kitchens ever since – one specializing in pizza and Italian dishes while the second features steaks, seafood, ribs, burgers and other delicious fare.
One busy location still means plenty of work. “We are hands on,” Lori says. “We own and operate it, so we’re here five days a week. We have built an excellent staff, and we treat our staff like our own kids.”
Holly Tonini
The River House Cafe has a number of regular customers that keep coming back for its delicious and expansive menu.
They’ve been known to help an employee who needs to get a car repaired or who needs help filling out financial aid forms for college. Lori says they try to be good role models for their young servers and kitchen staff, and teach them the restaurant business if they want to learn. But they also urge them to spread their wings. “We always encourage them to think about their future,” she adds. “We want to see them go off and do things they want to do.”
“This is our ‘Cheers,'” says Marisa Lee of Charleroi, a regular customer. “You don’t have any issues in here. You come in and you hug all of the kids. I have the highest respect for Lori and Mike and what they do for our community. She does refer to her staff as her kids. It’s really a special place.”
Roger and Bonny Lind of Belle Vernon started dining here when they began dating four years ago. “The people who work here and who own the business are so friendly, and they just make you want to come in, and it’s wonderful,” Bonny says. “We have the New York strip steak sometimes, and I like the Italian hoagies,” adds Roger, who recently joined family at River House Café for his 77th birthday party. “The pizza is good. We’ve never had anything bad.”
Working together can sometimes put a strain on a marriage, but Lori says she and Mike complement each other. “Here at work, we work opposite shifts,” she says. “I do all of the operations and manage the restaurant on Friday nights. That is my strength, because I come from a business background.”
Mike’s strength is overseeing the finances, books and purchasing. “And he’s so personable,” she adds. “That’s one of his biggest strengths. We really are hands on with our customers. We go around and talk to our customers, so we get to know them.”
The couple, married since 1985 with two grown children, schedule regular date nights to keep the romance alive. They try to reserve Sunday as a family day. “Sometimes we are constantly talking about work,” Lori laughs. “Then we’ll look at each other and realize we have to stop.”
Holly Tonini
The River House Cafe’s bar is a popular local happy hour spot.
As the restaurant marks its 10th anniversary this month, Mike and Lori look to its past and the future. “We put together more comfort food, and that’s what we started off with,” Lori says. “As we started to progress, our menu progressed. We changed chefs and our chef now, Trey Lightowler, is so phenomenal!”
Trey’s two brothers also work at the café now, and he creates special seasonal dishes and menus for events such as wine, bourbon and beer pairing dinners or weekend entree specials, depending on what fresh seafood is available from his supplier.
The Courys have talked with the Lightowler boys about the possibility of eventually taking over the restaurant. “We would love to see one of our kids down here take over the business down the road when we’re ready,” Lori says. For now, the focus is on celebrating the restaurant’s first decade in business, thanking its loyal customers and expanding its reputation and draw beyond the Mon Valley. “We’ve become a destination restaurant,” Lori says. “I’m trying to pull more people down into Charleroi. We are so perfectly located between I-70 and the Mon-Fayette Expressway. Our customer base is phenomenal, and we’ve gotten to be good friends with so many of them.”