Darn! Great restaurant closing! :-(

[Oaktree]

You have to appreciate small businesses. It's always been tough. Friend of mine opened a pizzeria. Amazing food, good manager, hard time attracting and keeping staff. The margins are paper thin. Wants to grow, back to the staffing issues.

If it is not the product that kills the business, it is the service.

I feel for small business owners.

A restaurant in particular is a tough way to make a living. I read somewhere once that something like 85% of them fail in the first 5 years. To do it right, it's almost got to be your life and fewer and fewer people today want that kind of lifestyle. Who can blame them?

Looking at the prices on the menus the OP posted, hard to see how they can make any sort of profit. Maybe the place is paid off, but for a new owner prices are going to have to go up.

 

[ddbackhoe]

Middleton's Cherry blend.

Ah, my dad used that and some from the farm to make his own secret blend. Several attempts to make cherry tobacco apparently were not successful.

 

[Tomtint]

The food service business is notoriously known for high turnover rates. The failure rate of new operations in the first 5 years is among the highest and ultimately one of the riskiest there is.
Mom and pop places that manage to survive and build a strong local repeat customer base, have done so by working very long days, At some point being there to open the doors in the AM to receive the days food delivery, prep the salad bar and inevitably end up being there to lock the back door after they mopped the kitchen floor after closing time.
Many restaurants rely on the bar to make ends meet. alcohol has a much larger profit margin than a home cooked chicken dinner. Food loss ( shrinkage ) can kill a small operation. Dinner gets burned, dropped on the floor, prepared wrong, or a special does not sell as expected.. All direct loss to the bottom line. No way in the world I would go into the food business with no experience.

 

[ddbackhoe]

The food service business is notoriously known for high turnover rates. The failure rate of new operations in the first 5 years is among the highest and ultimately one of the riskiest there is.
Mom and pop places that manage to survive and build a strong local repeat customer base, have done so by working very long days, At some point being there to open the doors in the AM to receive the days food delivery, prep the salad bar and inevitably end up being there to lock the back door after they mopped the kitchen floor after closing time.
Many restaurants rely on the bar to make ends meet. alcohol has a much larger profit margin than a home cooked chicken dinner. Food loss ( shrinkage ) can kill a small operation. Dinner gets burned, dropped on the floor, prepared wrong, or a special does not sell as expected.. All direct loss to the bottom line. No way in the world I would go into the food business with no experience.

I doubt your data is wrong, the collection points may be skewed.
Do they distinguish between a one family mom and pop vs a failed franchise?

Farm to table used to be the only way to get supplies, now the norm is the Sysco truck.

Isnt it just as probable that people have become lazier or less motivated to do for themselves? How many raise their own meat and/or vegetables? Canning as a way of life? When I drive through town I see lines of cars at the fast food drive thru places. I see people lined up with a pager waiting their turn for microwave dining, same at Outback and Lonestar steak(?) places.
Guess i”m cheap or too old. Dinner out for me is at a friends place. Dining in, I can have cocktails, appetizers and dinner for 6 probably less expensively than these people spend for 2.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

We ate there today and just returned. It's the first place I took my wife in 1972. I wished I had a recorder today, absolutely incredible. A 1/2 hr. wait for a table...I've never seen a place so crowded. The waitress so funny "well...it's been nice serving you for 100 years!".
I was mistaken the owner owned the building. Waitress said he will soon be 92 and "it's time". She said he was grandfathered in but now it's over, the property owner owns everything around and since it's in a prime location has plans to tear down and rebuild (townhouses, a mall...something).
Really strange experience, everyone hugging waitresses, owner & his wife. Just the end to a long chapter in our life!