Little shop of smiles

0 Comments | Roanoke Times & World News, May 27, 2010 | by Sarah Bruyn Jones

Bob Pollitt wants to see the smiles of the people whose false teeth he carefully molds.

For years, Pollitt, like most with his job, has worked behind the scenes, creating the teeth that a dentist then fits into a patient’s mouth. He has rarely met the patient.

“I want to see that human being, to know them, to see that smile,” said Pollitt, 64.

To make that happen, Pollitt has built a storefront dental laboratory at 103 College St. in Christiansburg. He said he spent about $150,000 to buy the land and build the two-story lab facility.

His dream is to concentrate on denture repairs, doing the job in a matter of hours instead of days.

“They can come in, sit, play Wii, have a cup of tea, and relax while I fix their teeth,” said Pollitt, who ran the bar and restaurant Sgt. Pepper’s British Pub in Roanoke for about a decade.

“We made them smile then, too,” he said.

He’s trying to mix his hospitality experience with his knowledge of false teeth.

His new office is located behind two dentists, Dr. Stephen Myers and Dr. Raymond Munz. Pollitt bought the land from Myers. Munz runs The Denture Center.

Trained in his native England, Pollitt knows the intricacies of finding the right shape and color teeth to satisfy each patient. Until recently, he worked out of his Roanoke County home, crafting full upper and lower denture sets, partials, bridges, crowns and implants for patients missing all or some of their teeth.

Before taking a hiatus to run the restaurant, Pollitt built a career focused on making bridges and crowns in Richmond and Roanoke. Now, while he will do the others, Pollitt said he will focus on dentures and partials.

That’s because the industry is predicting a surge in demand for dentures. With the aging population and more educated dental consumers demanding natural-looking false teeth, the trade publication LMT Communications reported last year that the number of adults needing one or two complete dentures will increase to 37.9 million adults in 2020.

While not a direct comparison, in 2008 the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion reported in its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System that 18.5 percent of Americans had lost all their natural teeth.

“Sixty years ago we thought dentures would be a thing of the past,” Pollitt said

No tags