At least the Dayton Daily News didn’t put it on the front page, screaming “another downtown restaurant closes”- well, of course- thanks to our “small view” of Downtown, the Breakfast Club isn’t “downtown.”
The story has the owner blaming staffing problems. Who am I to argue? I was always amazed they could be profitable with such a small number of seats. The food was great, but the place was micro-sized.
Restaurant owner closes, blames worker troubles [1]
The owner of the Breakfast Club Café — a breakfast-and-lunch mainstay at South Main Street and South Patterson Boulevard for decades — has closed the restaurant because, he said, he has been unable to attract and keep quality employees.“The biggest factor, by far, has been the difficulty in obtaining reliable employees. Nothing else comes close,” said Bryan Whipp, the Breakfast Club’s owner.
This leaves another opportunity for a “business breakfast” restaurant to open downtown. There is Denny’s on Main, Tank’s on Wayne, the hotels, and for members, the Dayton Raquet Club. Or is the business breakfast dying off like the martini lunch?
Never went there but once – cash-only places aren’t convenient for me. That place was always packed, though. Seriously, the only reason he had to close was not having stable employees? Sounds a bit weird to me.
The owners comment:
“He said he had difficulty finding employees who “would be polite, on time, who would show up, and who would show respect to the public that’s paying their wages.”
That was one of the first things I noticed when I moved here from California: the bad attitude of people behind the counter as well as waiters and waitressess..like they are doing YOU a favor to take your order or to wait on you (as well as just bad service in generaL).
So, yeah, I can see this being a valid gripe.
On the bright side, the Golden Nugget on S. Dixie and the China Cottage on Far Hills in Centerville are both slated to reopen soon! Golden Nugget on the 6th, China Cottage on the 13th, according to the DDN.
So is it for sale? I didn’t hear anything about that.
Food was very good, cash was a moderate inconvenience. Always seemed busy….too bad we can have unemployment, crime, and no one willing to perform a decent job when offered…
I have no idea if it is for sale-
I’ll drive by soon and look.
I don’t buy the line about the employees.
I believe the Breakfast Club owner’s story. Having been in the restaurant business myself I experienced the same problems with most of the employees. When the employees do not show up for work the owner suffers along with the patrons due to lack of service. The owner must do the work his employees were hired to do.
Look, turnover rates in restaurants are a two way street.
70 employees in a year for a 12 person staff is a TERRIBLE turnover ratio. It can’t all be that the business had an epidemic of unreliable employees. If he kept making bad hiring decisions then he deserved to go out of business.
Or maybe most of the employees that left had a good reason? There could be more to the story. It’s too bad DDN didn’t try to interview and employees, now we’ll probably never know.
The explanation that they simply had lazy or shiftless employees does not hold water to me.