Terrible. Losing a lot of good restaurants. I use to feel like we had an abundance of places to go in the city. Now, not as much so.

I also lament the restaurants that are closing of late.

The reality is that 60% fail within their first year, and 80% go under within the first five years.

A lot of work, love, and hope go into opening a restaurant. There are real people and dreams behind those statistics.

How's that gentrification going?

Maddi's is a great place. Hope they will open another location in Worcester.

Until then, Depot St. Tavern in Milford is the owner's original place and hope to see them thriving for a long time.

the ballpark is revitalizing these places right out of business

I agree. I liked Broth too. I hope they resurrect somewhere close!

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This is very sad.

They were closed Mon-Wed. Open most Thursday, Friday & Saturday evenings, then Sunday brunch. They didn’t open today or this past Thursday. A lot of places in Kelley Square have (what I think of as) odd days/hours. I’m always checking a place’s social media to see if they’re open before I go out.

I got blasted for saying it before, but eating up parking spaces with bumped out sidewalks has people going elsewhere. One of the restaurants even blamed parking in an article. 🤦‍♂️

Depot St is awesome

Poor management had this place on this path for a while now. The owner has a track record for that. They just decided to blame the ballpark after others did, as an out strategy.

If it's not on shrewsbury st, the city doesnt care.

Never even heard of it...

"that stupid fucking ballpark" is how I always reference it in conversation.

Well I can say the manager there sucked out loud. He was absolutely terrible to customers. If your going to rely on grubhub to survive it might be in your best interest to give customers a call when a menu item is out of stock instead of just sending a partial order

Union Station Parking Garage is literally right there. It was easy to park there on a Friday night.

Didn’t realize the Depot St. people had another restaurant. My grandparents live nearby and it’s always packed when I drive by it.

What is the actual reason these places are closing? Are rents going up or is it lack of buisness?

Honestly I’ve not been going out to eat. Prices are way to high and service is shoddy. Easier and cheaper just to cook myself.

I totally agree!!!! That stupid fucking park!! What a waste of space!!

Literally not true.

That sounds good. What do you taste like?

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I've seen no good thing about eating in the street. I avoid places that have forced out door tables like in street or parking lots.

Those hours are an effect, not a cause.

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Horseshit, they were regularly open longer hours on weekends, and on more weekdays pre-covid and even in 2020. For example: https://www.instagram.com/p/B11Xt0cnDie/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

EDIT: lol ok well since you've edited your comment from "Those have always been their hours", here's one where they posted about opening at 4 on Mon and Wed, and another about being open until 11 on a Saturday.

When you reach a certain density of businesses on a given street, the street parking is less useful. Increasingly you can only rely on the space immediately in front of your business. And the 2-4 parking spaces in front of a restaurant aren't going to come anywhere near filling the place.

What would honestly help the businesses in that area a lot would be a frequent (say, every 15 min) shuttle that ran a small route from Kelley Square, up Water St, across Franklin St, stopping at the bus hub, and going down Green St back to Kelley Square. And have it run LATE. At least until midnight. Could stop waiting at the hub after the last commuter train leaves, since other buses all stop running before that.

It's not the city's job to provide parking for restaurant patrons. It *is* the city's job to provide safe spaces for people to walk.

I agree, but Worcester is culturally not a park and walk city.

Shame. Really liked their fun menu.

Honestly I think it's a mixture of both? Super sad to see. Had a small heart attack when I saw Table Talk gone, but quickly learned they're just relocating until the building gets renovated.

Most restaurants fail. Its just a fact of the industry.

The problem is that restaurant margins are already small and the cost of labor has gone way up. People point to parking as an issue, but Shrewsbury Street has good parking, and Green Street never did. On top of that, new garages are being built in the area.

It has to become that, though, if it wants to have more than just a few restaurants. In the meanwhile, the restaurants could provide valet service, as the Shrewsbury Street places do.

So not literally never open. Just giving you shit because that word is so overused and almost always incorrectly. 👍🏿

That's gonna have to change if we want businesses to succeed in areas where rent is high and space is tight. It is neither practical nor in any way desirable for every business to provide free parking immediately adjacent to its front door for all of its customers.

Just think about restaurants - they have tons of patrons on Friday and Saturday at 7pm, fewer at other times, and zero much of the time. Meaning that for all of their weekend customers to be able to park right there, really valuable land has to be set aside for parking and go completely unused the rest of the time. That drives the cost of owning a restaurant way up - because you have to own the parking lot, too, which brings you no revenue and spends most of its time sitting empty.

Here's a video illustrating the problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akm7ik-H_7U

Table talk built a brand new facility. The little store will be back on Green St eventually.

Worcester needs to adapt. Not having any parking available at all is one thing. Not having parking right outside the establishment door because people don’t want to walk for three-five-ten minutes is something else.

A shuttle would be nice, but not necessary imo. Afaik the wrta can’t keep up with the regular routes due to driver shortages so I can’t see them adding any additional rn.

Eta- there are at maybe 2-3? Free busses that run the complete length of green street now. I’m guessing at least 1-2 of those also run down the other street on the opposite side of the peanut. No idea how late though.

Valet Service 👍didn’t even think of that. (I don’t drive so not on my radar)

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I feel like these closures are getting progressively worse. Hangover had some good ideas but never operated well, Buck's had some good food, Smokestack had a solid 10 year run, and Maddi's seemed like a beloved neighborhood spot (Worcester Eats is fucking *devastated*). Gotta be worried about who's next.

when we lost the park grill i knew it was going downhill

Maybe Worcester Eats is part of the problem. The people on there are BRUTAL.

I definitely agree with you, and FWIW I disagree with the notion of "if I am going somewhere I must be able to park RIGHT out front or I will no longer go", especially in a city like Worcester where there are SO many low-cost parking options less than a quarter mile from....anywhere really.

I said this in another thread reply, but FWIW I disagree with the notion of "if I am going somewhere I must be able to park RIGHT out front or I will no longer go", especially in a city like Worcester where there are SO many low-cost parking options less than a quarter mile from....anywhere really. Even for folks who don't drive or choose not to, I know the WRTA sucks but Uber/Lyft are also insanely reasonable in Worcester.

Are they still up each other's assholes about a Breen's joke from three years ago?

Yes. Exactly that.

Cool cool cool, thanks for that intel. I'll keep them muted then :).

No, those hours only happened post Covid

Sidewalks were shit or non existant in the area before. I see a lot more people walking around and shopping on the weekends now

And i've never seen that garage at capacity

Its a great spot. good food, and a good brunch. I've been there probably a couple dozen times

I mean, if one of the reason's they can't stay open because they can't get people to work I'm not sure how you not only staff but pay for valets. And where are you going to park the cars that come for valet service?

There really isn’t any food in Worcester that I’d justify the price tag for.

pork

The parking is the worst in that area. We always had trouble.

How about that Grafton street rotary? GIANT sidewalks, and a traffic nightmare, but hey, plenty of space for pedestrians.

A traffic nightmare, and they are going to do the exact same thing with the Chandler street reconfiguration.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

See definition 2. It was used correctly.

That area has always been jammed with traffic. The rotary makes the traffic patterns more predictable and clear which makes it safer. Larger spaces for pedestrians makes pedestrians more visible to traffic.

On Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares TV Show, it seems many people use their life savings to start a restaurant when they are in their late 40s/early 50s - hoping to parlay their savings into a nice retirement fortune. Unfortunately most of them end up bankrupt and have then either lost the house, retirement, or both!

Best way to make a small fortune in the restaurant business is to start with a large one.

It was never ever this bad. It’s literally 15 minutes from cvs to 290 almost every afternoon. Now, is it safer for pedestrians, I don’t know, it might well be, but it does seem to me that all of those cars trucks and buses stuck in traffic are going to increase pollution. Heywood street into Kelly square is the same, traffic nightmare, but that was the goal, slow everything down for pedestrians.