What’s Behind the Recent Rash of Closings
I am concerned about the latest round of owner-operated closings around the city. Taste Select Wines, Gypsy, Latin Café, Segovia and Gene’s have all bitten the dust. Some like Gypsy, Taste and the Spanish-styled Segovia have barely made it past a year while Gene’s and Latin Café (formerly Dona Emilia’s) have been around much longer. Nonetheless, they will all be missed by the Austin food community.
So why did they close? Well, we could blame the economy but it’s much more than that. Each restaurant failed to establish a core customer base of regular patrons. A rule of thumb for high end restaurants is that at least 70% of their revenue is likely to come from roughly 30% of the customer base. Loyal regulars can help smaller restaurants withstand the exigencies of a highly competitive business with precariously small margins. Several of these restaurants were also plagued with various city-initiated construction madness (particularly Taste) at various times. Segovia simply picked the wrong place to open: Oak Hill would not have been my choice for a Spanish restaurant: wrong demographics. As for Gypsy, I suspect that they were under funded from the get go. I enjoyed the food but after the ROT Biker weekend when the restaurant only grossed $800 for the weekend, owner Shawn Gamble had had enough.
As for Latin Café, the name change from Dona Emilia’s was an attempt by owner Howard Kells to reflect a broader range of menu choices: from solely Colombian to a more diverse latin american cuisine. I thought the food was always very good but the restaurant was never able to achieve any kind of gravitas with Austin foodies.
I feel badly for all these entrepreneurs who invested savings, maxed out credit cards, went to “angel investors”: all because banks are notorious in their unwillingness to lend a dime to start up restaurants. And I feel badly for all the owner operated places in the River City who are just a few bad nights away from joining those places mentioned above. I feel badly for an owner like Parind Vora at Jezebel who lost a night’s business so the bikers could parade up Congress. I feel worse still for all the food fans in Austin who helplessly watch these unique, Austin-centric spots slip away.
So next time you are overwhelmed with a need to go to some big chain restaurant, think about what makes this city unique. If we lose many more of our owner operated joints, that uniqueness will start to fade away and we’ll begin to resemble a city like Duncanville, where Olive Gardens and Red Lobsters dominate the food scene. Nothing against these places, but there’s more to life than an unending salad bowl.
