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(Residential & Commercial price the same) • $25 per month and volume discounts are available • Special Offers and Gift Paks available Local Calling Access from (and their surrounding areas) Walled Lake Lake Orion Pontiac Aubum Hills Bloomfield Commerce Rochester W. Bloomfield Birmingham Clarkston Drayton Plains Oxford Special New Years Offer $12.50 per month!* (810) 334-5492 Call Now for Internet with Speed! *offer only good for six month and one year contracts 1 T H E DET RO IT J E WIS H N EWS 1)SpeedLink 00 A Division of SpeedNet, Inc. http://worspeedUnk.net email webadman@speedlink.net 531/2 West Huron Street, Suite 211 Pontiac, MI 48342 Tel: (810) 334-5492 Fax: (810)332-5570 Modem AAccesz (810)334,1940 TRUST YOUR NEXT CATERED AFFAIR TO THE FINEST KOSHER CATERER We Cater At Most Synagogues, Temples, Hotels and the Halls Of Your Choice CLASSIC CUISINE Approved by Council of Orthodox Rabbis PHILIP TEWEL Food and Beverage Director (810) 661-4050 Farrnington Hills, Michigan STAR page 59 a person's attention. Instead of 30 chandise before customers enter week after Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman visited the store seconds, rm getting people seeing the store. "Once the promotion is over, and signed the jersey, it was worth and standing in my store for maybe 30 minutes," Mr. Odetalla they will turn around and sell the $120. The profit margins don't thrill says. 2 a all sports fans. Many would ar- Michael Fishman, owner of gue that paying anything at all the Sports Gallery in Birming- isn't fair, because if it weren't ham, hired Celebrity Place- >r-c for fans, sports figures wouldn't ment Services to bring in Red 2 enjoy the kind of fame and Wings defenseman Nicklas wealth they have today. Lidstrom for a celebrity auto- Mr. Gold sees it differently. graph session a few weeks ago. "'IV personalities have more It was the first time he's host- longevity, but the average ath- ed a celebrity visit, and it drew lete's career is five or six years. a few hundred customers. All athletes have to market is "It would've been better, but their name, so they have to there were eight or nine other cash in while they can. If the players around town. The Rus- store owners are going to make sians (five Red Wing players) a profit, then why not the sports are real popular right now. It stars, too? was fun. It was a great oppor- "At the same time, it's a risk tunity, great exposure," he said to the business owners as well. To cover the cost of bringing They're banking on people to in an athlete, owners try to es- pay and see a celebrity. They're timate the number of people also gambling that the money who will attend and divide the they're fronting to buy the jer- athlete's fee by that estimated attendance number. This helps Michael Gold of Celebrity Placement Services . seys, sticks and balls the celebrity will sign are going to be them determine the fees they charge customers to get photos, stuffat two or three times the orig- sold," he says. Adds Mr. Fishman, "Playing to sports cards, jerseys, pucks and inal price," he says. Mr. Gold, for example, pur- see and talk to an athlete is about balls signed. Mr. Gold says business owners chased an unofficial Detroit Red the best way a guy can get an au- often ask athletes to sign mer- Wings hockey jersey for $90. A tograph." ❑ Still Cookin' After All These. Years JULIE EDGAR STAFF WRITER N orthwestern Highway used to be the corridor of choice for discriminating shoppers. Nowadays, on Saturdays, you could shoot a cannon through some of the stores and restau- rants, including Bonnie's Patis- serie. But owner Bonnie Fishman has no plans to move the place she opened 16 years ago when she was a mere 26. Where else would she find a genuine cottage on the banks of a gentle stream, a place that offers customers the refuge of a rose-filled arbor to enjoy their pasta with roasted corn sauce or tea and cake? And even with slow weekends, the intersection of Northwestern and Twelve Mile Road still bus- tles with hungry businesspeople during the week. Ms. Fishman's catering and corporate lunches take up the slack that was par- tially caused by the explosion of big and small stores along Or- chard Lake Road. "Saturday used to be the busiest day of the week. There are still as many businesses, but retail is stagnant," she said, not- ing the closure of several of the original stores at Applegate Square and the imminent de-' parture of FID and Merchant of Vino. "It'll be like a ghost town around here, but rm reluctant to move." After returning from California with her husband, podiatrist Robert Ketai, Ms. Fishman opened Bonnie's with $30,000, a song by today's standards, she ac- knowledges. A graduate of the Cordon Bleu cooking school in London, she had previously managed the Money Tree in downtown De- troit and had only been away for just over a year, so people knew her. Plus, Bonnie's was one of the first authentic patisseries in the metropolitan area. "Business was good from the start. People liked the idea of food made from scratch," she said. Af- ter two years, she had already re- couped her initial investment. The first four years kept her baking in the kitchen full time, even with three other full-time employees. Ms. Fishman, mother of Ben, 13, and Hanna, 8, still comes in every day, but she doesn't put on an apron. Instead, PHOTO BY DANIEL LIPPITT WHEN YOU INVEST YOU'RE BEGINNING A PROCESS THAT WILL INVOLVE SEVERAL STEPS. BUT NONE ARE BIGGER THAN THE ONE YOU TAKE To MEET: The crew at Bonnie's Patisserie in Smithfield (left to right): Joan Melnlck, Nancy King, Patrick Cornelius, Maureen Clark, Bonnie Fishman and John Smith.