There were some great developments in 2014 for the downtown restaurant scene, including a round of recent openings.
In the last few weeks, we’ve written about the new spots Dept. 7 East on Broughton Street and Bub-Ba-Q on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, plus the reopening of Soho South Café on Liberty Street.
Obviously, other restaurants have opened in 2013. Some seem to be doing great business, including Tequila’s Town on Whitaker Street and Chive Sea Bar & Lounge on Broughton Street.
And we obviously have many restaurants that have been thriving for years.
But numerous spots in the busiest parts of the Historic District closed this year. There are now at least seven empty former restaurant spaces on Broughton Street, plus several vacancies in the northwest quadrant of downtown.
A few of those storefronts have been empty since the 2007-2009 recession, while a few closed recently.
As I’ve said here before, restaurants shut their doors for a variety of reasons.
The thriving ones succeed through some combination of food, service, value, location, marketing, business acumen and other factors.
Still, some restaurateurs who seem to do almost everything right aren’t able to make a go of it.
Sometimes restaurants just have bad luck.
It’s hard to generalize about the struggles and fortunes of restaurants in downtown Savannah, but I’m going to throw caution to the wind for the rest of this column and touch upon a few issues.
Location matters
There are six vacant restaurant spaces on the south side of Broughton Street. The Crypt Pub, also on that side of Broughton , opened as a restaurant but now operates as a bar and nightclub.
It’s hard not to see a pattern.
Sure, Broughton Street is close to the hotels on Bay and River streets, but consider the experience of the overnight guests who venture out.
Those visitors would likely see restaurant options on River Street, on Bay Street, in City Market and on Congress Street before getting as far as Broughton Street.
Conversely, locals traveling into downtown for dinner would also find plenty of spots to stop along the way before getting as far north as Broughton.
And that raises an interesting question: Does Broughton Street simply have too many restaurant spaces?
Yes, Kayak Kafé, 45 Bistro, Ruan Thai Cuisine and other establishments seem to be doing fine on the south side of Broughton.
But if all those empty spaces were filled, would there be enough patrons to support them all?
Beware the illusion of busy days and busy nights
Most people who live outside the downtown area visit the Historic District when it’s busy. I know from myriad emails and conversations that some those people seem to think that downtown is bustling all the time.
They don’t see the streets when they’re empty. They don’t realize just how quiet the city can be.
Some new restaurateurs and bar owners seem to get fooled by this illusion.
Sure, they build some slower days and nights into their business plans, but they don’t realize just how slow things can get.
If you’re paying kitchen staff and have perishables on hand, those slow stretches can be painfully expensive.
Too many restaurants respond to the slow periods by closing early or making other unpredictable moves. Sudden changes like those tend to spawn other problems.
Marketing is necessary
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find restaurant websites that are woefully out of date, that don’t work on mobile devices or that have other obvious flaws.
Ditto for Facebook business pages. Why wouldn’t you put a copy of your menu on Facebook? Why not have your hours current? Why not post regularly and make rudimentary efforts to get more “likes”?
Of course, some restaurants obviously don’t need to use social media actively. One longstanding downtown restaurant hasn’t posted to Facebook in over two years but still has more than 5,000 Facebook fans and picks up new ones every day.
Another successful restaurant has over 2,500 Facebook fans without even claiming its own page.
New establishments, however, generally can’t afford to be so lax.
There are obviously many other ways to market a new downtown restaurant, from taking out ads to networking with concierges, from hosting events to creating eye-catching signage.
But too many restaurants open without clear marketing plans. In some cases, they don’t even have a good sense of their target audience.
Obviously, successful restaurants need to give patrons consistently good experiences with food and service, but nothing can happen if they don’t get people in the door.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.