The best promotion for the Farmhouse Café & Eatery in Cresskill took place months before its recent grand opening. Passers-by would stop and ask co-owner Nathan Kipperman what he was building. And as the project progressed, the interest and excitement grew, he says.

"The best advertising was building it," says Nathan, an architect who designed the building and was the general contractor. Construction took about nine months.

"A lot of people who go to the gas station on the corner told me, 'I was watching you build it and I couldn't wait for you to open up," he says. "It was like Pavlovian advertising. We dragged out the construction for so long that we had people waiting for us to open."

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