The challenge of opening two Bristol restaurants at once could seem overwhelming, but in their careers JR and Leanne Rusgrove have already survived a devastating fire, a flood, a septic system failure and a $60,000 vandalism spree.

“We love this business, but restaurants are hard work. We know we’ll be looking at 16- and 18-hour days for the next few weeks,” JR Rusgrove said Thursday in the vacant 6,200-square-foot building that he and his wife are trying to remodel by New Year’s Day.

The former Foodie’s on North Main Street will become the new, vastly larger home of the Rusgroves’ popular Parkside Cafe on Federal Hill, long the premier breakfast restaurant in the city.

A 2-minute drive away, the Rusgroves are converting the closed Dunkin’ Donuts at Bristol Hospital into a seven-day-a-week café. Coupled with their Pure Foods health food café and Main Street Pint & Plate, the Rusgroves expect to be running four restaurants in Bristol by mid-winter.

In a city that was long known as a culinary desert, the Rusgroves have been at the forefront of a steady — though slow — move to more adventurous dining choices.

They opened the Parkside in 2008 offering traditional eggs-and-bacon fare, but built its reputation on fruit crepes and more exotic specialties like The Hot Mess, described as “grilled Texas toast with fried egg, crispy bacon, gouda and muenster cheese, tomato slices and pesto mayo.”

After Main Street Pint & Plate opened three years ago, the menu added a few novelties to the more standard pub fare: Faroe Island salmon, Cajun chicken alfredo and fried brussels sprouts with maple sugar and pecorino cheese.

“We spend a lot of money on food. So many places used canned fruit. We have a budget of $500 a week for fresh fruit,” JR Rusgrove said. “It’s important.”

The tiny Parkside built a following with its menu, linen tablecloths and napkins at breakfast and a welcoming atmosphere: The Rusgroves’ motto is “Enter as strangers, leave as friends.” Politicians, business leaders and city officials soon made it the hotspot for Sunday breakfasts: There’s frequently a 30-minute or longer wait on weekend mornings, and on-street parking is usually tight during breakfast and lunch hours.

All of that made their business important to planners trying to get the downtown revitalization back on track several years ago. The Chamber of Commerce eagerly promoted the opening of Main Street Pint & Plate in the former Barley and Vine building, and former Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu’s administration worked to bring the Parkside to its soon-to-be new home on North Main Street in the heart of downtown.

Newly elected Mayor Jeff Caggiano is a big supporter as well, and said Friday that “JR is a great restaurant owner in Bristol. Parkside downtown in that new space is going to be a new hot spot, especially on the weekends.”

Bristol Hospital is looking for the Rusgroves to provide a vibrant “business café” when they open Ivy’s Brewed Awakenings in January. The business takes over the Dunkin’ space in the main lobby, and will serve visitors and employees from breakfast through dinner hours.

“Their reputation in terms of quality and service in this community is excellent, so it was an easy decision for us,” President Kurt Barwis said. “When I walked in this morning, Dunkin’ Donuts was moving out and there was JR already in the space getting started.”

On Thursday, the Rusgroves divided time between working on the new Parkside space, signing bank paperwork, scheduling inspections and planning their staffing rosters for the restaurants. Both are veterans of long previous careers — JR in manufacturing and sales, Leanne in the business end of the nursing field — but say they wouldn’t do anything else now.

“I grew up in Bristol, right by where the Parkside is now. This is where we have our home,” JR Rusgrove said. “The first job I ever had was working at Maple Street Pizza, a beautiful little restaurant owned by a Greek couple. That was right next to where Parkside is. It was impeccable. Nick and Esther and their two daughters ran it, and it was phenomenal.”

Growing up, he sampled unusual and exotic foods from several cultures at his father’s insistence, he said.

“I’ve always had a huge passion for food. My father, who was probably my biggest culinary mentor, used to take me to places and make me eat things. My father took me to Martino’s Market and made me sniff the cheese, eat the sausage. By Muzzy Field there was this little Italian place and I’d eat the soffritto, the gizzards, the hearts. By the time I got to 10 or 12, chicken nuggets and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had no allure to me,” he said.

At age 12, he told his family he wanted to own an ice cream shop on Federal Hill.

“I think I was baptized with an entrepreneurial spirit. From the youngest age, from my first paper route, I’ve always loved the thought of being in charge of my own destiny, being my own boss.”

He ended up with a decadeslong detour into manufacturing procurement, but a year after marrying Leanne in 2007 decided he was done with corporate life. She followed soon afterward, and they now they split the duties of their restaurants.

“There are so many things Leanne can do that I can’t. As much as I’ve had an appreciation for food and all things culinary, Leanne knew how to run a restaurant,” he said.

“We definitely complement each other,” Leanne Rusgrove said. “He does a lot of the marketing and purchasing. I do a lot of the day-to-day management. He does the menus. I do the computer work, scheduling.”

The Parkside was a hit from the start: The Rusgroves rang up $200 more in sales the first day than they’d expected, and have never done less than that.

But they’ve hit plenty of obstacles in 13 years of business. A malfunctioning appliance set off a fire that gutted the Parkside in 2011, and they didn’t reopen for more than a year. In the meantime, they tried a fine dining experiment — Garnish — in the center of Forestville. Garnish was damaged when the Pequabuck River flooded during a severe storm, but ultimately failed because it couldn’t draw enough regulars to keep going.

The Rusgroves also opened a breakfast restaurant in Wolcott, but had to shut down when the landlord’s septic system failed — with repair costs estimated at $100,000.

And as the Foodie’s renovations were underway in November, thieves destroyed an estimated $60,000 worth of air conditioners and roofing as they ripped apart the air handling system in search of salvage metal. With all of the adversity, JR Rusgrove still approaches the new projects with enthusiasm.

“To have one successful restaurant in your life is incredible, but to have as many as we’ve had and to continue this going seems almost impossible,” he said. “But we work. We’re in our restaurants 18 hours a day, seven days a week. I came in one night, my family was here from South Carolina and came for dinner. We had a dishwasher who didn’t show up because he wasn’t feeling well. I ran in the kitchen and did dishes. I’d come back to the table a little and nibble on my meal, then jump back in the kitchen and do more dishes.

“You don’t have a choice,” he said. “If I leave the one kid who’s doing dishes without help, he’s going to quit. He needs to see the integrity of who we are. If something goes wrong, Leanne or I don’t think, ‘Who’s going to fix it?’ There are people where those obligations in their restaurants are beneath them. We don’t think that way. We are solely responsible for the entire package of this restaurant.”