Where's the free beef, ex-owners ask

Perks at issue in Hilltop lawsuit

Hilltop Steak House opened in 1961. In the 1970s and '80s, the restaurant was serving 20,000 customers a week. (Globe Staff Photo / Dina Rudick)

When Frank Giuffrida walked away from his beloved restaurant, Hilltop Steak House, two decades ago, the small-time businessman-turned-local restaurant mogul made sure to negotiate a lifetime of perks for himself and his family, perks he believed to be "etched in stone."

The Giuffridas would never wait in line at the sprawling Saugus landmark that Frank built, according to an agreement signed in 1988. Their presence, amid the hungry crowds and life-size fiberglass cattle, would always be the "highest priority" of the new owners. The next available table would always be theirs, and "unlimited" quantities of food and drink would be free to them and their guests. Forever.

But the Giuffridas, who have always enjoyed a good steak, now find themselves embroiled in a juicy legal beef over their supposed lifetime privileges. With the sale of the property in 2004 - just months after Frank's death - the current ownership says the privileges have expired.

It's a decision that an Essex County Superior Court judge held up last year without a trial. But Frank Giuffrida's widow, Irene, and two daughters have long argued that they never would have sold the property had they known it meant forfeiting their free steaks. And this week, the state Appeals Court, while upholding most of the lower court's decision, handed the family a small victory. It ruled that the Giuffridas should have the right to argue at a trial that they were misled by the owners of the restaurant that still bears Frank's name on a 68-foot cactus sign on Route 1.

"They're very disappointed with what happened," said Paul Samson, the family's lawyer. "They feel that it hurts the memory of their father. He'd probably be rolling over in his grave if he knew what had happened."

Meat was a family business for Frank Giuffrida, a Lawrence native, but he always wanted to have a restaurant. And with Irene at his side, they realized that dream in 1961.

She was the hostess. He was the owner. The portions were large, the prices reasonable, and the décor 1960s kitsch, complete with a herd of fiberglass cattle and that unforgettable cactus sign with nearly a half-mile of neon tubing beckoning to passersby.

People loved it. Lines were common and so were doggie bags. "I'm generous by nature," Giuffrida once said. "If I get a deal, I pass it on to the customer." And business, in short, became a huge success. In the 1970s and '80s, the Hilltop was serving 20,000 customers a week, and for several years, one trade magazine said it was the highest-grossing independent restaurant in the country. In 1986, the magazine said it grossed $26.9 million.

But in 1988, Giuffrida, in his early 70s, wanted out. He sold the corporation that owned and operated the Hilltop, but retained ownership of the land and the building, leasing it with a few conditions: that he and his family be granted free meals and beverages at the restaurant, lounge, and adjoining butcher shop; that they be treated with "courtesy and respect," never waiting in line for anything; and that they receive these privileges for the rest of their lives.

"It was very important to him to be treated with the utmost respect," said Samson. "To him, the Hilltop name meant everything - even after he stopped owning it."

For years, this system worked, Samson said, with Giuffrida, his wife, their daughters, and grandchildren dining there "many times a month and sometimes with large parties." The agreement even survived the new owner, High Country Investor Inc., which in 1997 became the third group to run the Hilltop.

But after Giuffrida died in December 2003 at age 86 and High Country expressed interest in exercising its right to buy the business outright, tensions grew between the family and two Hilltop officials: High Country principal Richard Monfort and chief financial officer Dennis January.

Worried that the company wouldn't be able to close the sale by the end of March 2004, as High Country wanted, January contacted a manager of the family's assets that month, according to court documents, and said Monfort was "very unhappy" with the Giuffridas. And if they were unable to close the deal in time, the court documents continued, January could make it difficult for the family to enjoy the privileges Frank had secured.

"Both men were aware that it was important to the Giuffridas not to be treated like ordinary customers," the appeals court wrote this week, "and that, for example, they did not wish to go through the cash register, even if they would not be charged."

In short order, the family sold the property. They did nothing to formally preserve their privileges established in the original lease, according to the court, because they believed they were "etched in stone." But within six months, the owners informed the family there'd be no more free food.

"We were patient; we did all that the family asked," Monfort wrote the Giuffridas' lawyer in October 2004. But, he said, "We have no more obligations remaining . . . to the Giuffrida Family."

The appeals court affirmed this week that the Hilltop owners were not "contractually obliged" to continue the privileges once their lease was terminated. But the court also found that a trial should determine whether the owners may have deceived the Giuffridas by representing that their privileges would remain, postlease, even though they intended to end them.

Monfort, a Colorado businessman and part-owner of the Colorado Rockies, did not return calls seeking comment for this story. The company's lawyer also declined to comment, as did January yesterday.

For now, however, it is a business that the Giuffridas themselves do not visit any longer. But they plan to keep pushing for the access they once enjoyed. Irene Giuffrida made that much known in an undated letter to the Hilltop owners.

"If Frank was alive today, he would not want us to be bullied into accepting the termination of these rights," she wrote in the letter, a copy of which is included in the court file. "He would want us to fight for them."

Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.