Harris Eckstut, Founder and Principal

Founder and principal of Eckstut Consulting, Harris Eckstut, has over 30 years of business experience, first as a successful restaurateur and subsequently as a consultant to fellow restaurant owners and small businesses. In addition, he has worked extensively with community organizations, business groups and government agencies in the revitalization of urban and suburban Main Streets across the country.

As a veteran of the restaurant business (he owned and operated the successful South Street Philadelphia restaurant Montserrat American Bistro for 20 years), Eckstut is familiar with every aspect of the restaurant industry. He knows the "dollars and sense" of owning a restaurant including operations, management, marketing and financing. For the past ten years, Eckstut has used his experience and skills to help scores of independently owned restaurants, taking start-ups from concept to completion or guiding the turnaround of those in trouble.

In the 1990’s as a member of the South Street business community, Eckstut headed up the formation of South Street/Headhouse Business Improvement District in an effort to secure the welfare of independently owned businesses in the area and to assure the continuation of the community as a thriving business hub, residential community and cultural center. His success is borne out today by the area’s prominence as one of the nation’s most vibrant small business communities.

Taking the knowledge gained firsthand as founding chairman of the South Street/Headhouse Business Improvement District, Eckstut went on to lend his expertise to other projects involved in "bringing back" urban and suburban Main Streets. Navigating bureaucracies, working with community residents, assessing the economic landscapes, Eckstut learned the necessary tactics for reinvigorating these underperforming centers. He has worked with developers such as Streuver Bros, Eccles & Rouse on the East Coast and with agencies such as Wilmington’s Economic Development Corporation, LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation), The Merchants Fund of Philadelphia as well as with numerous community development corporations, investors and realtors.

Eckstut is a commercial real estate agent licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and boasts a sommelier certification from the American Sommelier Association. He has received numerous awards such as inclusion in the South Street Hall of Fame in 2001 and as one of the top 20 Pennsylvania Restaurateurs in 1998. In 1996, Eckstut also received honors for his outstanding community service from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In addition to his consulting business, Eckstut often lectures on restaurant ownership at the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia and for community organizations and business groups. He is a graduate of Villanova University and as he likes to say after many years in the restaurant business, "from the School of Hard Knocks as well." He is the father of three and lives in Merchantville, New Jersey.