We have a place like that in Milwaukee. Started out as a Sizzler that closed*, since then it’s been I think three other places and a fourth one is about to open. You’d think at some point someone would tear it down and put up an office building or a store or something other then a restaurant. I felt bad for the last people that went in there. They had a bar elsewhere, been around for quite a few years, then they moved to this place and went out of business in less then a year.
*The Sizzler closed after a child got E.Coli and died…Whether or not the stigma is what caused all the other places to fail, I don’t know.
There’s some behind-the-scenes action that can kill even an established and successful restaurant.
Berkeley is a fairly famous town in California, with lots and lots of places to eat, from student-oriented holes to funky ethnic eateries to fast food counters to internationally famous restaurants. It’s also densely populated, being in close proximity to San Francisco and with a world-class University. Property values are high, and if you just paid outrageous coin for a building with some restaurant space, the impulse is to jack up that lease. If you’ve got an already-thriving business in that space, well, it’s a gold mine! Crank that baby up to 11!
Except that restaurants are a lower margin than some property owners realize, and more competitive than the line out the door would lead you to believe. So the high rent kills off the business, or the restaurant moves, and a succession of naive wanna-bes, franchisees, and other starry-eyed folk moves in, fails, and moves out. Bancroft and Telegraph should be one of the best corners in town, but I saw a parade of food shops fail when I was there in the '80s, though some of them were very good indeed. Another near-failure was Cafe Roma, which was the single most popular cafe near campus. Excellent coffee, huge customer loyalty, nearly driven out of business when the new landlord kicked up the rent. They relocated, and were successful for a while, but still ended up closing some years later.
Over the last 10 years the restautant on 8th and Layton has been…
Sizzler
Bigg’s Roadhouse
Milwaukee Grill
Bigalke’s
and coming soon…the Stone Sword, a medieval themed restaurant.
Agreed. Good restaurants are tough to do. Every now and then you get a restaurant owner who moves into the ‘cursed’ restaurant spot and makes a go of it because they serve good eats.
Location matters, but a great location can only cover for lousy food. With the recession, I see a ton of places closed that should have died a long time ago. This was the last straw.
That said, a lot of budding restauranteurs open in some of these places because they are cheap to rent. You aren’t the only one to think the place has problems as a restaurant space. The landlord has to cut rents to get people into these places. And the prospect of getting a really cheap space with is too attactive for the guy who has always wanted to make gourmet hamburgers for a living. Once the burgers suck, the guy closes and the ‘curse’ goes on.
There’s a mexican place here in town that has been here over thirty years. It’s on one of the busiest streets in town, and yet I hardly ever see anyone in there. I’ve eaten there maybe twice, and the food is really bad. And yet it is still open.
I think it must be a front for some other illegal business.
There’s a Chinese restaurant like that by me. Been there as long as I can remember, but I hardly ever see cars there. At lunch there will be maybe 3 cars in the lot, but the rest of the day there aren’t any (not even employee cars). How they’ve been hanging on so long, I don’t know.
There was one like that near me; a restaurant would be open there for a year or two, then it would sit vacant for years, then something else would open, repeat 4 or 5 times. They finally tore the building down and now it’s an empty lot.
Difficult access can keep customers away. Bad food or prices that are too high will also do it. This place had poor access and questionable food. The building was old too, and probably infested.
Don’t forget changing the hours of operation and/or days of operation frequently, so that the customers never know when you’re open or not.
Another thing that owners of failing restaurants often do is to get upset and take it out on their customers. There was a Blimpie’s in our town that was failing, and the owner used to vent every time I went in there. I started actively avoiding the place because it was such a downer. I go to a place for lunch now that seems to be circling the drain, and the owner is doing the same thing. I’m a regular, so he seems to think that he can vent and complain to me about how his business is going.
There were three different sandwich shops that opened in our town. Each time, the owners went through the same pattern. When they first opened, they were extremely motivated and very upbeat and friendly. A few months later, they seemed subdued and little depressed. A few months later, they were morose and didn’t smile at all. It was about this time that the hours would start changing–finding out that they were closed on Mondays or weekends, or closed at 2 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. If they were open, the owners actually seemed hostile. Shortly thereafter, you’d see the “Out of Business” sign.
I’ll bet that the prospective owners visit the place with the realtor during the day when traffic is light, instead of during meal times when traffic is heavy.
The other reason why these places fail: chain restaurants (like Chilis, Outback, etc.). There is no way an independent guy can match these chain’s buying power and advertising. They also serve large portions at low prices. So Al’s Steakhouse cannot offer a better product-plus, if the cook at Al’s fails to show up, the manager has to get behind the counter-he serves 20-30 burned steaks one night, word gets around…and “Al’s” is history.
In my college days there was a “cursed” restaurant about 2 blocks from the main dining hall. It started as a Denny’s, closed and then was a succession of the same sort of quasi-diner sit down places, all independent. Thing is, that kind of food could be readily had at the dining hall, in nearly unlimited quantity, and most of the students has already paid for it. So who’s gonna eat there?
Not only that, it was practically on campus, so when school was out the traffic was practically nil. I never understood why the new owners kept lining up to make the same mistake, a $6 trip to the dining hall would have gone a long way to illuminate them,
There was a place like that where I grew up, but it wasn’t just a restaurant. In one ten-year span it was a hair salon, a Dress Barn, a gift boutique, and several different restaurants. Not all in a row either, I mean people knocked down and then re-built kitchens in there year after year.
I’ve always thought it was because of the smell. There was a strange sort of musty smell in that building. Most of my friends said they couldn’t smell it, but I’m betting subconsciously they did. People said it “wasn’t clean” but couldn’t point to why. So that was always my theory.
It’s been a Fudrucker’s for a long while now (5-6 years?) and the smell is gone.
I suspect that in many neighborhoods the restaurant industry is cannibalistic- there is no excess demand for restaurants, so any new restaurant must necessarily steal customers from the old ones. Old entrenched businesses tend to win that fight- they’ve got at least a few loyal customers, people know the menu and know what they like, and the new business is still trying to pay off a start-up loan.
New restaurants have to draw in a customer base quickly- the only advantage they have is that they’re new and exciting, and that’s not much of an advantage and fleeting anyway. They almost have to have a gimmick- otherwise, who’s going to come? New businesses have to create a reason for customers to come, and it can’t just be being slightly better than the competition. They have to provide something radically different- both better and different- or everyone will stay away in droves. Most gimmicks are basically gambles- cheap drinks, funky themes, different style of food- and gambles carry risk. Many risks do not pay off.
I think even if you can exclude a rash of under-capitalization, stream of bad managers, etc., you can still find that actual locations are ‘cursed’ or generally bad locations for restaurants. In addition to the location just being bad per se, like you said, you have to consider how the interior of the location might come into play or be affected by the exterior location in the neighborhood.
Maybe the area would be great for local workers looking for a quick lunch/breakfast or takeout, but the place is too big for that and better suited for a lot of tables who’re taking their time eating (relatively). Even with a lot of traffic in and out, the fixed costs of the restaurant may be too much to become successful. If you could magically build an ideal restaurant in the same location, rather than lease an existing building, something 2/3rds the size might provide the revenue per square foot needed to survive.
Or contrarily, you have a place in a neighborhood where people want to drop a lot of money and enjoy a several course meal. Unfortunately, you leased a space that was too small to fit enough tables to bring in the sales you need to cover all your costs. Everyone in the neighborhood and all the other restaurants are fine dining, so a fast food place with more turns isn’t going to do well, but the fine dining establishment can’t bring in enough money either without more tables. But the size is what it is, so everyone who tries fails.
Sometimes, it’s just a matter of equipment quality, electric wiring or kitchen layout.
If a kitchen has a bad layout (causing cross contamination or discouraging good washing), or the coolers and freezers never work as well as they should, the place is going to do badly in health inspections no matter how hard the employees work to stay up to code. Money will be lost when people who check the inspection reports decide not to come, more will be lost in product waste, and if they put money into fixing up the equipment, there’s no guarantee the improvements will do enough for them to recover.
I know an entire building that is cursed. Three businesses in there failed, none of them stayed open longer than a year. I worked it when it was a Pizza Hut, and it folded like 10 years ago. No business that moved in afterwards (to the old PH location or either side’s neighbor) lasted longer than a year. Two out of three were restaurants, but the third was some other business. Currently, 2 out of three are vacant.