GOLD RIVER, CA (MPG) - Family-owned restaurant The Mimosa House has added Gold River to their previous five locations with a ribbon cutting on March 23. “I started as a dishwasher back at least 10 years ago, at the first one over in Folsom,” said Devin Dedier, chief operations officer of the business.  “Then after that, we did El Dorado Hills and Roseville, and then after that Rancho Cordova, East Sacramento, and now we’re in Gold River.” The family also owns Stick House, an Asian fusion restaurant in El Dorado Hills Town Center. 

Every Sunday, Devin said, the family would go out to family brunch, and the five kids would always bug their father, Louis Dedier, to start a restaurant.  “It’s any kid’s dream to come into a restaurant where you can eat all the food that you want,” Devin said.  “So we pestered him enough to where he was finally, ‘Okay, I’ll invest in a restaurant.’” 

The Mimosa House menu is very large, around seven pages of just breakfast items.  “We all fought over what items to put on the menu,” Devin said.  “We couldn’t really decide on just a one-page menu, so we decided, ‘Let’s just do everything that we like.’  From there it took on a life of its own.” The restaurant started with just a few flavors of mimosas.  “Then we fought over it again because all of us like different things,” Devin said.  “Now we have pretty close to 100 different Mimosa flavors.”

Louis, the owner and CEO, said, “The idea behind the menu was, you could come here every week and never have the same item again all year.” In addition to the large menu, they have a new special every week.  “Special doesn’t mean it’s cheap, special doesn’t mean it’s discounted,” Louis said. “Special means it’s special.” A breakfast sandwich they call the Mary Lou came from a woman in El Dorado Hills.  “It did what she wanted, we put it on special, it sold at the beginning, so we named it after her.  It’s all community based.”

The family was talking originally about expanding outside of the Sacramento area.  “We’re trying to find that fine line between expanding too much and keeping everything local, family friendly,” Devin said.  “We want it to feel like when you come into our restaurant you know us because we’re neighbors.  And we don’t want to miss out on that feeling once we start expanding to other cities.  That’s probably why we kept everything so local because we’re really trying to showcase that we really are local.”

As time went on, it was the tradition of the kids of the family to work in the restaurants and decide for themselves if they would continue to be part of the restaurant industry. “My father still is owning, as CEO, and then my mother is senior vice president, my older sister is compliance officer, myself as operations officer, my little sister, she’s going to be taking a little break because she’s pregnant, she’s going to be due in July, that’s super exciting, and then my youngest sister is just now going to college at Folsom Lake College.”

Louis has one brother and four sisters, his wife, Stephanie, has two sisters and two brothers.  “We’re a very large family in Sacramento.”