Rio’s Road Sign called us and Russell the owner captivated us. A stand out random run-in on our return road trip from Prince Edward island Canada traveling back to NY through Maine.
Dave my other half and I took a really fun road trip from New Rochelle, New York to Prince Edward Island, Canada, with stops along the way there and along the way back. The last stop of our trip, right before we headed back home, was in Belfast, Maine. Totally random. Totally random choice of where we stayed overnight and totally random choice of where we went to eat.
Saw the road sign for RIO’s and decided to check it out.
Rio’s is a wow and deliciously different if you’re ever in the area on your own road trip through Maine. Best chicken dinner ever and the cavatelli with kale etc. had me licking my plate. Really Really Great.
Our unplanned random road trip stop at RIO’s also included live music, unexpectedly warm ambiance, and meeting a dynamic guy named Russell Manton. He is the owner, along with his wife, in fact Rio R-I-O stands for all three of his immediate family. “R’ is for Russell, “I” stands for his beautiful daughter Ilinka and ‘O’ for his brilliant wife Oana (2 Masters!). We met all three, and Dave and I shared some time at the bar with Russell. He’s was the most charming and interesting guy.
Russell does some awesome things besides own and run RIO with his wife, the fabulous restaurant located at 357 W. Main Street in Searsport, Maine.
He owns one of only six companies in the U.S. that makes the electronic room key door locks for hotels!
Russell went from making jet engines at Rolls-Royce to making door locks for hotels. “900 hotels and half a million locks later, we’re still at it”, says Russell. His company is called SureTech Access Systems located on South Main Street in Morro, Maine.
For the record Russell says, those hotel room key cards do not contain your personal information as many of us including me always thought they did.
Russell also made a super cool black ceiling fan that was above us in his restaurant that I kept staring at. Instead of one ceiling fan, it’s multiple fans, almost like engine fans, but beautifully created and designed, and black. I wanted it. He said, “You can’t buy it, I made it with my 3D printer” . I’m like, you made it? Can you make me one? I mean, crazy fabulous.
You’re gonna love meeting Russell Manton who checks in live from Nantucket where he’s installing more of his electronic hotel room locks in The Nantucket Inn, during this podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show. His Scottish accent is just fabulous. So’s his personality.
As new strangers go – He’s a keeper!
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT If you’d rather read than listen ….
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0:00:19
Sometimes along the road of life, you meet some really fabulous people and you want to hang on to them a little longer than just pass through.
Hi everybody, I’m Debbie Nigro. Welcome to my show, back from a really fun road trip from New Rochelle, New York to Prince Edward Island, Canada, with stops along the way there and along the way back. The last stop of our trip, right before we headed back home, was in Belfast, Maine. Totally random, totally random choice of where we stayed and totally random choice of where we went to eat. Now, the last dinner there will be the basis for this interview I’m about to embark upon here.
There’s a place called Rio’s, right? Restaurant. Saw the road sign, called us, kind of like spoke to us. And then once we got inside and had the experience, Russell, the owner, captivated us. You’re about to meet him right now, Russell Manton. He is the owner, along with his wife, Rio R-I-O stands for Russell, I stands for his beautiful daughter Ilinka and his brilliant wife Oana. And we met all three and Russell is just the most interesting cat.
I’ll tell you he’s from Scotland, grew up in Northern England and somehow landed in Maine from South Florida. Russell, welcome to my show live from Nantucket I think.
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0:01:35
Well, thank you, Debbie. What an introduction. I mean, where do I go from there? I love the fact you said it was your last dinner. Your last supper.
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0:01:46
My last supper.
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0:01:47
That’s real, my goodness. Wow.
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0:01:50
I want to just tell you, your chef, I mean, seriously, I never tasted anything that good. The chicken Dave had, and we’ve had a lot of great meals, we were like staring at it and savoring it like, wow, who could make chicken like this? And my dish with the cavatelli and the kale and the salami with the fennel, I said, are you kidding me? It was so good. We were talking about it, I was licking the plate. That was level one. Then we look up and see this incredible, unique fan that went across the whole top of your restaurant all black. I said, we’ve got to get one of those for our house. And then I find out you made it right in 3D printing like who does this and then you go on to come over and tell us about your other business where you make the electronic security locks for hotels I’m like kidding me and then we met the wife and your daughter let me just wrap up I’ll let you talk who says to me she’s nine she goes so what’s your talent I go who do you think you are me son of a gun anyway you’re fabulous. What are you doing in Nantucket?
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0:02:52
Well, I am in the lovely island of Nantucket here last night because we and a couple of my stores are working on a beautiful little hotel called the Nantucket Inn right here on the island. And we are putting in the aforementioned door locks. We are dragging them, kicking and streaming into the 21st century.
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0:03:13
Oh, I know.
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0:03:14
That’s what I’m going to be doing for the next couple of weeks here.
1
0:03:16
Wow, that’s so cool. It’s funny that you should be doing that. You did share with me that you’re only one of six companies in the United States who are legally allowed to create these locks, is that correct?
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0:03:27
That is correct, yes. We are very, very fortunate. I fell into this. Went from making jet engines at Rolls-Royce to making door locks for hotels now. 900 hotels and half a million locks later, we’re still at it.
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0:03:50
Let’s go back to you making the jet engines for Rolls-Royce. I mean, that’s my engineer here in the studio loves engineering anything. You’re an engineer by trade or no? By trade, yes, absolutely.
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0:04:01
We, you can tell from the accent, as you well know, we share a lovely single malt together. Yes. I am from Scotland, and some of the things you said about the restaurant proves that we are very frugal, because everything was made by us up there, because my Scottish side came out. But going back to the engineering thing, I did an apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce, Rolls-Royce Aerospace, and in the midst of that was also in the Royal Marines. We did kind of like the British version of your GI Bill. Wow. So yeah, full apprenticeship and I learned to be a design engineer with Rolls-Royce and enjoyed every minute of it. And then I finally got the opportunity to come to the United States. I came for two weeks, Debbie. Two weeks. I had a return ticket to go back home. Really? Yes. I flew into JFK, New York, and my first little house was where I was staying anyway was in a place called Rahway, New Jersey.
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0:04:55
And I got a ticket.
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0:04:56
A little Rahway.
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0:04:57
An old Rahway known for its domed prison, I believe. And yeah, that was for two weeks and that was 33 years ago. So either I just missed my flight or I’m really bad at timing.
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0:05:12
And then Wayne, you share with us that I live in Westchester County, New York, and there’s one of the cities is Yonkers, New York. You landed there for a few minutes. What were you doing in Yonkers, New York?
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0:05:23
Absolutely right. After my wonderful spell in Raleway, New Jersey, I met a lady, a very nice lady, and she lived
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0:05:31
in Yonkers.
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0:05:32
That’s funny. And I went, and I was there for about, oh, I’d say, the best part of a year. And very close to, I remember, the thing that stands out about Yoghurt was how friendly the people were. And we lived opposite to this little Polish club. And the apartment that we had was in a house owned by an elderly Polish couple. He used to visit us every night with a huge plate of pierogies. And as you saw the other night, I could do with losing a few pounds or two and the pierogies didn’t help.
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0:06:04
You know I was talking to my good friend Moe and Larry who know that Polish club and I told them, I said we met this incredible guy and he lived there for awhile and the lady brought pierogies because I know Larry goes crazy on pierogies. He goes, we think we know the woman. What was her name? Do you know her name?
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0:06:18
Do you remember?
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0:06:19
I, I, you know what?
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0:06:20
Oh, it sucks to get old. I honestly don’t.
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0:06:22
It’s okay, it’s okay.
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0:06:23
I remember her smile and I remember this huge tray that always seemed to be under her chin filled full of these wonderful pierogi delights and a big pot of sour cream and you couldn’t turn it down and you had to eat every single one. Psychically, she would know if you didn’t. It was great.
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0:06:42
Wonderful time of my life.
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0:06:43
This is great. All right, so you landed in Maine and loved it and didn’t go home to Florida, but along the way or somehow you met your wife Ilynka who is from
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0:06:52
Romania. I’m going to correct you. Okay. Ilynka is our daughter. Oh I’m sorry.
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0:06:58
Oh, that’s my wife. Oh, I’m sorry. I have to switch that around.
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0:07:03
Absolutely fine. You know you were right in the Rio thing it’s Russell, Ilynka and Oana. Right. And I met my wife who she was working on a what’s called a J-1 visa at a little hotel that I had a partnership with down in Virginia Beach. And that’s how her and I met. And I thought, I don’t know, she’s rather pretty. And we hit up a relationship and it turns out that not only is she pretty, but she’s incredibly smart. Way smarter than I ever could could begin to to want for myself she has master’s degrees in good this was what yes you got a couple of master’s degrees
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0:07:42
I was very impressed with her and it just can you just clicked and you now you have you made your home together up in in Belfast Maine actually the restaurant location I was trying to give the proper address for I want I want to encourage anybody who’s on a road trip or traveling your way. You’re on West Main Street in Searsport, Maine.
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0:08:04
So… Yeah, close enough to Belfast, because the two towns that sandwich us, it’s Belfast and Searsport. And you’re absolutely right. We are right on the town line between the two. So a lot of people get us confused and say it is Belfast. But it’s a tourist route. It’s the route where you look right and you see the lovely Penobscot Bay there and the whales coming out of the uh… uh… in the daytime it’s it’s absolutely gorgeous so when i get the
1
0:08:31
well because i think that’s why i do this is not there was fogging it was terrible i was fogged in my hair was full of fog i don’t even know how i got out of the room with so much hair
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0:08:39
and so much fun in the whole of june it’s been nothing but for a guy it’s the first time in three weeks of it’ll see my goals i think it’s not
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0:08:47
you took over and the entire street there, it’s like an area where you pull into the restaurant, but then you have your engineering, whatever you make, the replacement cards for those electronic hotel locks, which I never can get to work the first time. I was actually thinking about the hotel lock along my trip. I used them many times, obviously, where I went, and I never get it swiped right the first time. I’m always like playing around, like maybe they gave me the wrong key, and then finally it goes click, click. What is it inside the card that clicks the door?
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0:09:16
Well, on the older type of ones, the ones that probably most people are more familiar with, it’s a little credit card, it looks like a credit card, with a black stripe on the back, which is a magnetic stripe, and you place it in the lock, a little slot or a slide, and try feverishly five or 10 times to get the things to work. Right. And it is simply a little memory strip that’s encoded onto a piece of basically videotape and that is the old style. That is why they don’t work very well. You put them next to your cell phones and they get demagnetized. You leave them on top of the TV, anything with a magnet in it demagnetizes these cards. So we have been manufacturing and selling, supporting for the last 15 years the upgrade of this which is RFID and most of your listeners will know what that means but for the ones who don’t that’s radio frequency identification. So these are the types of locks now where instead of trying to place a card into it you just wave it in front of it and away you get it. You use your cell phone or whatever.
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0:10:18
It’s kind of cool.
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0:10:19
Yeah, I have a question for you because obviously some people are using cell phones now to get into their hotel rooms. How does that work into what you’re doing?
2
0:10:26
Well, we also have that ability with our locks as well. That is, it’s an app that we developed and it goes onto your cell phone and it encrypts with wherever you’re staying, they would send you effectively a code via text and you would open up the app and the code would basically impregnate itself, if you will, into that app and all you do is just walk towards your door and you have a little green dot on your phone you click the dot and you’re in. Awesome. Is it true or
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0:10:55
not true that your personal information remains on that little card and you
2
0:11:01
should never leave it behind? I am so glad that you asked me that. Now I could say being that we sell a million key cards a month for everybody to take the keys home with them but the truthful answer to that is it is a complete fallacy.
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0:11:16
Really?
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0:11:17
There is absolutely no personal information whatsoever on any of these key cards, whether they be the old magnetic stripe cards or the new RFIDs. There is nothing personal on there. And that rumor started many, many years ago out of California and it actually came, it was initiated by a company that used to make key cards. So of course it was in their benefit. Everybody would take a card home. The hotels were having to buy more and more cards every month. There you go. It went viral. People now think, oh I want to take this card home because it’s got my information on it.
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0:11:53
Yeah, yeah, I’m one of those folks. Thanks for making me not worry about at least one thing. That’s one less stressful thing I have to consider.
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0:12:00
You do not need to do that. However, if you stay in a really nice hotel and they’ve got a nice card with the logo on there, I’m saying this quietly because I’ve done it myself, I’m very guilty of this.
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0:12:02
I love little mementos, so I’ve been known to walk away with a few key cards in my back pocket and then, oh, look at the place I stayed.
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0:12:10
That’s how you remember. Sometimes you forget and when you spot them, it does remind you of some beautiful times in your life for sure. Your company, for people listening, if anybody wants to know more about how that works or maybe has a small venue or a big hotel because you deal with all the big guys and girls too, SureTech Access Systems LLC on South Main Street in Morro, Maine. And this is your company as well. Ben, what’s all the 3D printing, how you made that nice fan? What’s that about?
2
0:12:49
Well, again, Debbie, this goes back to my humble Scottish upbringing and the notion that Scotsmen are rather frugal. In certain things, that is absolutely correct. That is that I started this little business up with people who are way smarter than I am insofar as I wanted things that I had to buy, like you mentioned the horizontal fan
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0:13:13
that we had.
1
0:13:14
No, it’s unbelievable. I never saw anything like it. Just to describe it, because it’s a theater of the mind, it goes across like an entire area. Instead of one ceiling fan, it’s multiple fans, almost like engine fans, but beautifully created and designed, and black. I wanted it. So he’s like, you can’t buy it, I made it. I’m like, you made it? Can you make me one? I mean, crazy fabulous. There’s a picture I’m going to put up in the podcast to follow so people can see. But let’s go back, we’re going to run out of time soon. Scott, Scotch is in your blood because you come from Scotland. My engineer Bob sitting across me right now, he’s Scottish background so we you know you’re feeling really at home here and you were telling me about the best Scotch you drink. We shared a Scotch together. I love single malt Scotch. I drank Scotch for 30 years because my mother sent me off to college telling me to drink Scotch so that I wouldn’t get a hangover, so I was like a perfect partner to share a toast with you. What’s your favorite single malt scotch?
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0:14:07
Well, my favorite single malt scotch out of the thousands out there is my McCallum. It is a popular scotch. It’s got more and more popular over the last few years.
1
0:14:17
McCallum, what year?
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0:14:18
McCallum 18.
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0:14:20
McCallum 18! You heard it here from the Scotsman himself. Russell, we have to go because we’re out of time, but boy, you can come do a show with me. You have no fear of talking, and you are a great guest today. Terrific random run in Russell Manton. His restaurant is Rio. If you’re ever going through Belfast, Maine, it is, of course, on the main road there on Main Street. You’re probably going to see it. Remember, you heard me say, get in there. You’re going to have a meal of a lifetime and meet some really incredible people. It’s going to feel great. You’ll remember them just like I did. Russell, love to your wife and daughter, and let’s stay friends.
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0:14:52
And same to you, and Dave, it was awesome meeting you both, and come back and see us soon. And same to you, and Dave, it was awesome meeting you both, and come back and see us soon.
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0:14:57
Will do.
