Restaurant Closings

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Permalink Reply by Howard Appell on October 5, 2009 at 7:07pm

Where do I begin. There have been so many in So. Florida I can't count them. Notable though is Busch's Seafood in Delray Beach. It's been there for ages. I'll get back to you with more.

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Permalink Reply by Kelly on October 8, 2009 at 8:49pm

Why is it surpirsing that a well-known restraunt would have to close? Here a few other backed companies and brands that have died or in the process of dying:

PANAM
ENRON
Circut City
Lehman Brothers
Saturn
GM

Restraurants, like all other businesses, do not die because of a bad economy. They die because they fail to stay relevant, control cost, and because of bad leadership.

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey J Kingman on October 8, 2009 at 8:59pm

Kelly - I think your reply might be a little simplistic. Yes, often those are reasons. But there are other valid reasons as well. Take for example Tavern on the Green.

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Permalink Reply by Bill Bridgmon on October 9, 2009 at 3:18pm

Without sounding like a politician.. I am of both minds..
Notwithstanding the demise of Lehman Bros. and Enron which were outright plundered.
A point was made about relevance and I can see that, or worse the resting on one's laurels..The Tavern on the Green had prestige but let it lapse in a much faster world than when they opened.
In the case of Espn zone ...Pan Am.. Circuit City ..Gm and Saturn
they all fell victim to being publicly traded and haveing C.E.O.'s putting investors and shareholders ahead of customers.

None of them are in the same class as an independant restauranteur that still welcomes customers.

Having swam in both private and corporate waters (I got out) the customer still needs to be the focus ...and in turn we should be able to make a living at doing it.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Fickert on October 9, 2009 at 9:09pm

The same thing that put the nail into GM's coffin I see happening to a lot of independent restaurants: not adapting to their market.

We have a lot of independent restaurants around here who's sales are down and are shrugging it off as bad economy, etc.. Yet the chain across the street (littereally) is moving into a bigger store. The big reason: the chain has adapted to new technology with online ordering.

This is a strange mix of a rural area that wants it "the way it's always been" and college students, predominately from larger cities who are used to technology and, in fact, won't even use their cell phones to call and place an order. We have restaurants that still don't accept credit cards. And guess what, the students won't go there because they have to have cash.

We got several of the local restaurants to start offering online ordering and all of us co-promoting a single web-site for the community. We're all doing okay. It can always be better, but we're keeping busy and with new customers while the others are starting to struggle and are cutting back hours, etc..

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