Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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• December 2011

Bistro Bleu To Close After Saturday Service [Love On Your Favorite Restaurant. Soon.]

Posted Dec 7, 2011 by Jeff Houck

Updated Dec 7, 2011 at 08:20 AM

Sad restaurant news to report: Bistro Bleu on south MacDill in Tampa will close after their service Saturday night.

A note from co-owner and chef Tina Hurless last night shared the bad news.

We are closing this Saturday. We have tried to find ways to make it work in the new location, but the economy seems to be against us. With all restaurants being down some these days, we just don’t have the financial backing we need to hold on through the next year or so it’s gonna take to get everything turned around to some sense of normalcy.

We are thankful to have had such a great run at this as a bistro, but our time has come.

I will regroup and probably open something in another year or two, but for now I need to get my feet back below me… and some long earned stress-free sleep.

This is bad, folks. Beyond just a restaurant closing.

Hurless and her former business partner Jessica Raia-Long started Bistro Bleu as NoHo Bistro in West Tampa at a time when it wasn’t exactly fashionable to do so in that part of town. Earlier this year, the business moved from north of I-275 on Armenia Avenue to South MacDill Avenue after Raia-Long sold her half of the business to co-worker Tomas Carrasquillo, who assumed front-of-house responsibilities.

The former location had a good lunch traffic and the business built a catering side business to supplement the bottom line, but the quaint eatery wasn’t exactly visible to south Tampa diners who rarely go north of Kennedy Boulevard. The new location, which had to compete with restaurants like Datz Deli, Restaurant BT and other better-established South Tampa spots, never really took off after the name changed to Bistro Bleu, despite going to great lengths to tell customers that the restaurant had ties to NoHo.

I loved the food. It kind of became an inside joke that I couldn’t resist the Bison Burger. Still can’t.

I had lots of company. Food critics dug the place, too. Back when it was NoHo, former Tribune dining critic John Allman gave the restaurant a glowing review in 2008:

TAMPA - It’s one thing for a dining critic to tell you how much he or she enjoyed a meal somewhere.

It’s just one opinion, after all. That’s why we often take other people with us to serve as a backstop - an unbiased sounding board.

This particular trip was no exception. Four very opinionated, discriminating palates all reached the same conclusion: The NoHo Bistro delivered one of the best meals each of us had eaten. Ever. From preparation to presentation.

This quietly confident restaurant in Tampa’s evolving North Howard-Armenia corridor has a handful of tables, hand-painted wall murals and a dinner menu to rival the city’s most revered and recognized dining destinations.

After several years building its reputation with a well-regarded lunch, NoHo’s owners have finally expanded to offer a four-day-a-week dinner service that truly must be tasted to be believed.

Hurless and Raia-Long were active in local business advocacy groups and championed the independent business community. They networked and did all the things small-business owners do when they’re trying to make a dent in the community.

But the economy never cut them a break. In 2009, I wrote:

TAMPA - At the intimate West Tampa restaurant NoHo Bistro on a recent Monday, there were 12 customers for lunch.

Usually, someone will order tea or a diet soda with their meal at the North Armenia Avenue restaurant. Occasionally, they’ll sip a glass of wine. On that Monday, everyone asked for a glass of tap water.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Or a free beverage with that lunch.

“I’m now giving them free water with lemon in a glass that cost me 16 cents,” co-owner Jessica Raia-Long says.

The economic recession has made life tough for restaurants. This past summer, the food-service industry experienced its fourth consecutive quarter of traffic declines, according to The NPD Group, a market research company.

Total restaurant traffic dropped by 3.6 percent during June, July, and August versus the summer quarter last year.
 
With such a slowdown becoming the norm, even something as small as a slice of lemon in a glass of water makes paying the bills more difficult.

No matter the size of the business, local restaurants have been forced to adapt in ways they never anticipated. Some are using the downturn to take advantage of better real estate deals. Others are getting by through creative management practices.

Raia-Long and her business partner, chef Tina Hurless, supplement their bottom line by working a tent at the Tampa Downtown Market on Fridays. While selling slices of Quiche Florentine for $3 each or entire pies for $12, they also advertise their catering services and an upcoming Thanksgiving meal on a chalkboard. A recent Friday’s sales brought in $220.

Then earlier this year, the restaurant got bit by the Groupon snake. I wrote about Bistro as a cautionary tale for restaurants who were considering discount coupon services as a way of generating foot traffic:

Bistro Bleu on South MacDill Avenue in Tampa, formerly NoHo Bistro, gave the Groupon thing a try last year during the summertime dead zone, from March to September.

All went fairly smoothly for the first few months. Customers bought their Groupons for $15 and tended to spend more than the $35 covered by the discount. Some booked parties at the restaurant after discovering it through the offer. A few became regulars.

Then the tsunami hit.

Toward the end of the six months, Groupon began reminding buyers that their time limit was about to end. Customers with discounts in hand flooded the restaurant. Only now, they weren’t going over the $35 limit. And the $15 that the restaurant was splitting in half with Groupon? The restaurant had to eat the service charge every time a customer used a credit card. And seats occupied by the Grouponers nudged out the full-paying,established clientele.

The customer profile changed as well. Those who came for dinners at the beginning of the offer instead started showing up for less-expensive lunches. And when their bill didn’t make it to $35 limit, they’d order a cookie. Or two. Or five.

“We used to go through three dozen cookies a week, offering them as a nice touch with the meal,” co-owner Tomas Carrasquillo told me. “We started going through three dozen a day. I had a prep guy spending three hours each shift just making cookies.”

It didn’t end when the offer expired. Groupon customers begged Carrasquillo to let them still use their coupons in the days and weeks after it ended.

“At first I said yes,” he said. “I recognize that there’s a certain value in not angering people.”

That didn’t satisfy the penny-pinchers.

Not even eight months later, after the business moved to South Tampa and changed its name. People still came begging for a markdown. One customer who got upset about the Groupon not being valid with a half-off bottle of wine offer went online to spew on Google Reviews.

The bottom line: Independent businesses are getting crushed right now. Fuel costs aren’t dropping significantly, which means food costs aren’t dropping. Which means profits for mid-tier restaurants are thin at best, if existent at all. Luxury restaurants and bargain eateries are making money, but the ones in the middle are getting pounded.

If you love a restaurant, go have a meal. Or two. They could use it right now.