The year is 1978. There’s disco glam, Grease playing at the drive-in, Jimmy Carter in the White House, Sony Walkmans blasting “Stayin’ Alive,” and nineteen-year-old Wayne Coyle serving drinks at the Ontario Center Hotel.
“I drove my ten-speed to work,” Coyle says. Now sixty-seven, Coyle’s been a friendly face behind the bar for nearly fifty years—and he’s not stopping any time soon.
It all started at the Ontario Country Club. Coyle worked in the bag room and as a caddy when he was eleven years old, and he taught golf there during his senior year of high school. When he went off to Boston for college, his passions followed him.
“I went for soccer and to have a good time—that’s where I really learned how to be in the restaurant business. I had all the parties. Even the social coordinator came to some of my parties. One time he showed up and said, ‘so this is where all the people are.’ They had a band playing at school, and nobody went ’cause they were all at my party,” Coyle says.
After college, Coyle decided to teach golf again. He worked as the assistant golf pro at the Bethlehem Management Club and then moved to the Country Club of Buffalo. But when word got around that a friend of his bought a bar, Coyle couldn’t resist going back into the hospitality scene.
“I was around twenty-three or twenty-four at the time,” Coyle says. “He wanted me to work for him, so I did. And then someone came in that was working at Crawdaddy’s Night Club and asked if I’d go work for them. So I did. I worked both until I couldn’t do both and then just kept to Crawdaddy’s and became the manager there. We had four bars, two restaurants—it was the lit dance floor back in the disco days. I loved the nightclub scene. Everybody used to dress up to go out—they don’t have clubs like they used to anymore.
When asked how many places he’s worked at, Coyle joked, “How long do you have? It’s been a lot of places. After two or three years I’d move around, go somewhere else. But I’ve been here at Mike’s Ridge Terrace Pub & Grill for six years now. I started as a bartender and then became the manager.”
Coyle worked at the Ocean Club, the Strathallan, and on Rochester’s fast ferry, the Spirit of Ontario. He also managed Jonathon’s Seafood Restaurant, which was located where Tully’s Good Times Rochester currently is, and was the director of food and beverage at Midvale Country Club. The list goes on, but his favorite places were Granskofskis Restaurant, which everyone called Gran’s, and Zaz’s in Webster.
“At Zaz’s in the ’90s when the Buffalo Bills were playing Houston in the playoffs, Buffalo was down maybe thirty-five to three, and we were packed that day. The score kept getting worse and worse and we just emptied out. We had like two or three people at the bar. All of a sudden, the Bills started to come back. Frank Reich comes in, and its touchdown, touchdown, touchdown—people start trickling back in. Then we were packed. Then we needed somebody at the door because we had no more room—people were looking through the windows—that had never happened before. I’ll never forget that day,” Coyle says.
“We were packed again for the Super Bowl, and we had a big buffet out. The owner just put food out for everybody—you don’t see that much anymore.”
A lot has changed in the industry, and being a beer guy, Coyle had to mention craft brews.
“If it’s cold, I don’t care what is, I’m drinking it—as long as it’s not craft,” Coyle says. “I’ll do Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Light … my father would drink Utica Club, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Black Label, all the regular beer ’cause there was no craft beer back then. Now a lot of people are opening up their own craft breweries, and then they go around to bars and try to sell their products. The craft cocktails as well. You have to go in an hour early just to get everything prepared, like your fruit tray. It wasn’t like that before—they didn’t have all that.”
Coyle’s gone from making fancy drinks at nightclubs, working until four in the morning, hosting New Year’s Eve, to slowing down a bit and working days instead of nights.
“It really was a show; I don’t want to do that anymore. I could do it if I wanted, but I just don’t want the fast pace anymore. I’ve had MS for fifteen years and just try to keep busy. I go to the gym, play golf, and keep moving here,” Coyle says.
But there are other Coyles still working the whole shebang—the knack runs in the family. One of his sons works part-time at Branca Midtown, the other part-time at Patron Saint.
“I trained them both when I was at the country club,” Coyle says. “They were in a band at the time, and I told them if they were going to be traveling around, they’d need to be in the restaurant business and really know the restaurant business because you can always get a job in the industry—whether it’s serving or bartending.”
The nights, the drinks, the events, the disco and karaoke … Coyle’s loved it all, but he’s stayed in the business this long for other reasons.
“The people that come in here keep me working. You get a following, and it’s a community. That’s the best part about it, and that’s the only reason I come back—because of the people. It’s always been that way. And hey, if you ever want to know something, you don’t need to read the paper, you come to the bar—everybody knows what’s going on,” Coyle jokes.
Mike’s Ridge Terrace Pub & Grill is located on Ridge Road in Webster. Grab a sandwich, catch up with friends, make some new ones, or grab a drink with Coyle—he’ll have a cold one waiting for you.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2026 issue of (585).
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