Category Archives: Culture

Weaver Street Market GM Responds to Panzanella Closing Post

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A few days after my recent post on the decision to close Panzanella restaurant in Carrboro, I received the following reply from Weaver Street Market General Manager Ruffin Slater.  I have reproduced it below in full, without any editing, with his permission.

Dear Patrick,

Thanks for your email. I appreciate you sharing how much Panzanella has meant to you and your disappointment over the decision to close. The Weaver Street board creates the policies that govern the co-op’s direction and outcomes, but the final decision was my responsibility so I want to tell you more about the rationale and process.

Since the recession in late 2008, fewer community members have been eating at Panzanella. When Panzanella’s lease came up in 2010, we decided to renew for three additional years with the anticipation that the number of diners would rebound. In spite of our efforts, Panzanella has 25% fewer diners today than we did in 2008. In the meantime, expenses have gone up, including rent, utilities, salaries and health insurance. The combination of declining customers and rising expenses means that Panzanella has been incurring significant losses.

With Panzanella’s lease coming up at the end of this year, we needed to decide between two difficult options: closing, which would disappoint loyal customers and displace staff; or making a multi-year lease commitment, which would risk incurring continuing losses. In making this decision, I tried to weigh the interests of owners and employees as well as Weaver Street’s long-term goals.

I very much appreciate that there are many loyal customers like you for whom Panzanella means a great deal. As Panzanella is part of Weaver Street Market, we look at the restaurant with a holistic approach: is the business model sustainable and does it benefit the co-op as a whole to continue? When Weaver Street opened Panzanella it was one of the few restaurants featuring local food. Now there are many choices. While this is great for our town, it means that Panzanella doesn’t play the unique role that it once did.

Since we renewed our lease three years ago, Panzanella has been trying to attract more diners. Over this period, sales in each of our Weaver Street stores have gone up each year, while sales in the restaurant have continued to decline. The upswing in store sales after a difficult recession tells us that the stores fill a need with our owners and customers. In contrast, the decline in Panzanella sales tells us that the restaurant fills less of a need than it once did.

In an effort to keep Panzanella open, we could have slashed expenses. Panzanella has higher costs than most restaurants because it uses higher priced ingredients and offers benefits such as paid time off and health insurance. However, this approach would have compromised our food offering and created a second class of employee within our co-op. We could have tried a different concept or changed locations, but this would have required an even bigger investment and even more risk.

In an effort to keep Panzanella open, we could have continued to subsidize the losses with revenues from our stores. This kind of cross-subsidy makes sense if it helps to accomplish the co-op’s broader mission. However, subsidizing Panzanella precludes other potential uses for those resources. We receive a lot of feedback about ways Weaver Street should improve, such as making the food in our grocery stores more affordable or filling positions in the co-op that have gone unfilled since the recession. At some point, it doesn’t make sense to continue to postpone progress on these goals in order to keep Panzanella open

After weighing all the factors I made the difficult decision that the responsible choice was to close Panzanella. In order to develop a positive transition path for Panzanella employees, it was necessary to make a definitive decision about closing and to develop a clear timeline. This allows us to concentrate time and energy in placing staff in other positions within Weaver Street or making a smooth transition to a new job. We have started that process and I’m hopeful that it will have a positive outcome.

Thanks for taking the time to express your feelings about Panzanella. Panzanella has made a great contribution to building community and to growing the interest in local food. It has been a wonderful restaurant and it sad for it to close.

Sincerely, Ruffin

Ruffin Slater, General Manager
Weaver Street Market
437 Dimmocks Mill Road Suite 10
Hillsborough NC 27278
P. 919.241.1767
ruffin@weaverstreetmarket.coop

On Panzanella Closing and The Responsibility of Community-Owned Businesses

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Panzanella Restaurant

Panzanella Restaurant (photo by Flickr user Dread Pirate Jeff)

 

Late this afternoon, via social media linked to a News and Observer article, came the gut punch news that beloved local restaurant Panzanella is closing.  On a personal level, this is just very, very sad.  Since DW and I got married over a decade ago, we have celebrated all sorts of major life events, and perhaps most of them– graduations, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, rare visits from cherished friends, you name it – at Panzanella.  With such good food, valuable relationships with local farmers, brewers, and other food producers, not to mention what has always been consistently a warm and friendly staff– this is a big surprise that nobody saw coming.

The restaurant business is a very challenging one, with many promising places going under less than a year after opening.  But this is no ordinary restaurant- it is part of the Weaver Street Market Co-op, billed as “Carrboro’s Community-Owned Italian Eatery” on the website www.panzanella.coop.  With this ownership structure, one would think that instead of making a unilateral decision to close, presumably by the Board of the Weaver Street Market Co-Op, there would have been some consulting with the broad pool of owners (I’ve been a member for 12 years, and at least 8,000-10,000 others have joined since I did)  about their perceived value of keeping Panzanella open, and what financial or other resources were needed to keep the restaurant open in its current location, or to explore what other choices beyond “close the doors and lay people off” existed.

There are a whole host of questions that come to mind that might have led to a different result, including:

  • The news article talks about an increase in costs and a drop in sales. Did Carr Mill Mall raise the rent?  If not, what costs are driving the closure? Are the same cost challenges facing the co-op’s grocery operations?
  • Did WSM consider relocating Panzanella within Carrboro? There are supposedly spaces for dining at the new PTA Thrift store in either the current or second phase. Would that have been a place the restaurant could have relocated to?
  • What about shrinking Panzanella’s relatively large dining room?  If half of the dining area could be turned back over to Carr Mill Mall and rented to a retail store, would a smaller version of the restaurant with the same kitchen be able to survive?
  • There’s a mention that the restaurant made more sense when the bakery and offices shared space with the restaurant.  But the bakery and office functions are now mostly (I presume, someone correct me if I’m wrong) at the food house in Hillsborough. That’s either new rent or a new mortgage compared to the “everybody-crowded-into-the-back-of-Panzanella” scenario.  Why is the restaurant suddenly characterized as a drain on the bottom line but the relatively new food house is not?
  • If the cooking/back of house space is underutilized at Panzanella, was going bigger-say, STARTING a real full-service bakery– ever considered?  I think most WSM members, when pressed, will admit that despite the best efforts to get stuff from the ovens at the food house to Carrboro and Chapel Hill, the freshness of the baked goods has definitely declined a small but perceptible amount since the baking function left the Carrboro store.  Bread and Butter in Chapel Hill is nice but it’s hard to imagine it’s meeting that need alone when Durham has Scratch, Loaf, Ninth Street Bakery and Daisy Cakes all within close proximity to each other.
  • The Carrboro store just finished its big remodel.  Part of this outcome was supposed to be a 60-80% reduction in utility bills.  Were none of the savings from this ongoing operational cost improvement enough to transition Panzanella to a more sustainable business model?
  • Are we owners going to get a big dividend this year?  After this, the answer better be “NO.”  If Panzanella closed down and consumer-owners received a big dividend, and the retention of that dividend might have kept Panzanella open, then that would be a huge mistake.  Frankly, most of the long-term member base is used to non-existent to miniscule dividends per dollar spent at WSM cash registers.
  • Was this discussed at the September 9th Annual Meeting in any way?  I can’t imagine it was; it would have been big news then, too.  Why not?
  • The 2013 Annual report for WSM shows a 2.6% net profit for both 2012 and 2013 after a very lean year in 2011.  Sales growth is steady (see page 3), averaging about 8% over the last three years, and the report appropriately boasts about saving more profits and reducing debt and increasing equity for the co-op.  Finances for Panzanella are not broken out so it’s hard to understand how much any dynamics of operating Panzanella did or did not contribute to threatening these positive trends for Weaver Street Market.
  • The cafe at WSM is about to be renovated/expanded.  Could a smaller version of Panzanella be incorporated into the expanded cafe?
  • The Draft (?) Vision 2022 document posted by Geoff Gilson online dated May 17, 2012 lists 10 strategies to help WSM reach their 2022 goals.  (I feel compelled to say that I have no idea if this is an official document but it would be a very strange thing for anyone to take the time to fake) Strategy Number 3 is “Engage owners more fully.”  Sub-topics under this heading include “Communicate about the co-op and the larger industry,” “survey owners regularly” and “create store advisory groups.”  These are all good ideas- why weren’t any of them pursued in making this big decision?  If the restaurant was struggling, why not empanel a Panzanella advisory group from owners to help problem-solve?

Decisions and Values

I recognize that at a certain level, this was a decision about dollars and cents informed by values, and that businesses come and go or change how they do things all the time.  When Facebook changes their layout for the umpteenth time or undoes some other privacy setting, we all know:

  1. They didn’t ask our opinion and they aren’t going to
  2. They believe that their stockholders will benefit financially from this decision in some way

But the whole point of a co-operative business model is to cultivate a better version of capitalism than a single-bottom-line approach.  Weaver Street Market has been  trying to walk that talk for 25 years, with what I would describe as better than average success.  I appreciate that, and have spent money in their store on products I know I could pay a little bit less for elsewhere, even within walking distance- because I have trusted that the local community impact of the dollar I spend at WSM is better than paying less in cold numbers somewhere else.

The flip side of this deal is that consumer-owners and worker-owners have the right to expect more from WSM, especially when they use the phrase “Community-Owned” in their materials, over and over again. The core of WSM’s brand is that there is a “Values Conversation” between the owners and management, that it is a two-way conversation, and that it is ongoing.

With that in mind, I hereby put the list of questions above on the table for Weaver Street Market.  I also hope that if Weaver Street Market rises to the occasion and grapples publicly with these questions before the end of the year, that they do so starting from a posture of MAYBE THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO CLOSING THE RESTAURANT, and if so, we should tell the owners what that is, even if it means sacrificing or delaying bring other priorities to fruition.  In doing so, WSM may find that those of us disappointed in this news may well reach the same conclusion that they made without us, or we may all find a third way forward that is neither a closing nor the apparently challenging status quo.

So Weaver Street Market leadership- care to comment?

Quick Thoughts on Carrboro Music Festival 2013

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Another Carrboro Music Festival (CMF) is in the books, and generally speaking, it was a great afternoon.  The timing of the event usually provides some of the best weather central North Carolina can offer, temperature/humidity-wise, and today delivered on that count in spades.  I biked all over the place, taking advantage of our new bicycle facilities on Main Street and the elevator to the roof of the parking deck. (more on that later)

As usual, the music was tremendous- I caught several excellent performances spanning a slew of genres, mostly from people who live in town or nearby.  The Tim Smith Band‘s reggae-influenced cover of “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison was my favorite surprise of the day- just flat out awesome, even in a set that pretty much killed for 40 minutes straight. Doug Largent‘s organ playing was a great joy to hear in person for the first time as well.  DC and I closed out the night at Steel String listening to Wes Collins‘ riveting “Waiting,” and then packed up the stroller and headed for home.

wes-collins-danny-gotham

Wes Collins (standing) & Danny Gotham at Steel String Brewery

Beyond enjoying the day, though, I spent a portion of my time wandering around thinking about what the CMF tells us about Carrboro for the other 364 days of the year.

Here are my take-aways. Unsurprisingly with me, they are public space and transport-centric:

  • Lots of cities talk about “managing/cultivating/some-action-verbing” their brand, and I have previously heard that a good brand “delivers on a promise.” Carrboro has a brand and it lives it without much fuss- the town is informal, fun, musical, artistic, accepting, and comfortable with a certain amount of chaos in service of those things. The CMF is not the town putting on a persona for a day; it’s just Carrboro being Carrboro, only more than usual. That’s a good thing.
  • It’s great to see buses running in Carrboro on Sundays.  We need our transit network to be a seven-day-a-week service. I asked Chapel Hill Transit staff and they said that a total of 679 passengers rode the two buses that provided Shuttle service on Sunday.
  • Even on the day of the year when the most visitors the town receives at once are there, traffic just isn’t that bad.  And maybe the alternatives to get downtown help a lot with that, but still.
  • The parking deck was open, but not from the side that most people were likely to get the chance to take advantage of it.  Even so, Levels 1-2 and a small part of 3 in the deck were filled.  The roof, 4, and 5 were mostly empty even after going past all the spaces reserved for the hotel. Check it out:

  • 3rd Level Parking Deck During Late Afternoon CMF

    3rd Level Parking Deck During Late Afternoon CMF

  • The sidewalks on our major streets need to be wider.  Walking in Carrboro can sometimes feel tenuous under usual conditions, but the CMF crowds exacerbate this by pointing out how deteriorated some of our sidewalks are in our most heavily-trafficked areas. I’m thinking particularly of the sidewalks just east of the railroad tracks on both sides of Main St. Hopefully we can plan for some improvements here for the pieces that 300 East Main’s redevelopment will not address.
  • Closing Weaver Street between the intersection with Main/Roberson and the Weaver/Greensboro intersection yields a pretty minimal impact to the overall traffic conditions but provides a fantastic livability dividend to everyone who gets to enjoy the street. We’ve had a long-term closure of this space for the Weaver Street re-construction and multiple events like CMF and Carrboro Open Streets show us that the town can not only survive, but THRIVE- without that roadway capacity.  We should think about what an opportunity that is for Carrboro to create a public space unlike any other in a town our size.  More on that in a future post.

 

Did you have any observations you’d like to share from  CMF 2013?  Please add them in the comments!

 

 

When Your Craft Brewery Turns Parking Into Space for People, Thank Them

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Steel String Raises a Tent

Steel String Raises a Tent

I had the pleasure of drinking my first Steel String Brewery beer several weeks back, outside on a small sliver of sidewalk between the front door of the taproom and the parking row just off the street. I believe I had the Rubber Room Session Ale and it was terrific.

Steel String Brewery Insta-Patio

The Steel String Brewery Insta-Patio

I caught up with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few months, enjoyed a good beer and appreciated the light breeze in the afternoon shade of the building.  It was almost perfect, the lone negative being a few cars pulling in and out right in front of us while we enjoyed our beverages.

A few weeks later, low and behold, Steel String has solved this issue and made a short stretch of South Greensboro Street more civilized, SAFER, and pedestrian friendly in the process.  In short, they’ve filled in the two parking spaces that abut the Wendy’s drive-thru exit with tables and chairs, and at certain times, a tent.

Why has this small change made such a big difference?  Let’s take a look. First, below is a Google Street View orientation to Steel String’s location, which is in a storefront that used to be occupied by the Trading Post used furniture store. Use the mouse to pan left and right in the image below, and you’ll see that the pedestrian conditions deteriorate pretty quickly once you walk from the corner of Main St and S. Greensboro to the first of the two driveway access points in and out of Wendy’s.

After that, while there is a sidewalk between the two Wendy’s driveways, the space in front of Steel String and restaurant Glass Half Full is a continuous row of parking.  Any parked car could pull out at any time, directly back into a pedestrian, and anyone trying to park could pull in off the street at the same time.  This is a pretty unsafe situation for a pedestrian who needs to constantly be looking in multiple directions to avoid getting hit on this stretch of pseudo-sidewalk.


View Larger Map
By turning these parking spaces into seating for their patrons, the restaurant has effectively removed the hazard to the pedestrians described above in both directions.  No cars are backing out of those spaces anymore, and no cars are turning in off of South Greensboro Street.  As for two parking spaces being out of commission, well, the town just bought several dozen spaces across the street and…it’s a bar! Do we really need to encourage people to drive to bars by requiring free parking right in front of the bar?

This type of local, small-scale, but meaningful transformation is in keeping with some of the best ideas springing up from a movement called tactical urbanism, which seeks to make quick changes to streets and neighborhoods to make them more people-friendly. The most well-publicized of these activities is PARKing Day, in which people all over the world convert metered parking spaces to mini-parks, such as in this public radio story from Colorado.

My key point here is this- Steel String has done something to delight their customers and the neighborhood, and inadvertently struck a positive blow for pedestrian safety. Good for them and good for us. If this wasn’t pre-cleared with the Town, let’s hope the official reaction is in keeping with the best Carrboro traditions of simply not freaking out when an informal market asserts itself, or in this case, informal awesome streetside public space asserting itself.

If we want to double down on a good idea, let’s ask Glass Half Full if they want to convert some or all of the next ten spaces to sidewalk dining!

Informal Urbanism Indicator #6: Food Trucks

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Food Truck Mini-Rodeo at Johnny's

Food Truck Mini-Rodeo at Johnny’s

Perhaps the most high-profile Informal Urban Indicator that can be spotted around Carrboro, Durham, and many other cities is the Food Truck. Whether committed to a regular spot or broadcasting its movements on Twitter, the repeated presence of one or more food trucks in a certain place is usually hinting at one thing: “this part of town could absorb more dining and perhaps more retail options.” If the place where the repeat appearances occur is single-use and does not include food service as part of its by-right zoning, the food trucks provide a hint on where mixed-use is warranted, and in some cases, desperately needed. (there’s a reason why whenever RTP hosts a food truck rodeo at their HQ, lines for lunch are 30 minutes long or longer)

Food trucks are particularly interesting as urban indicators because of their ability to relocate in response to demand for their food, albeit within constraints imposed by town operating rules. To my knowledge, Carrboro’s rules are rather simple and require that the food truck has a permit to operate in Carrboro, that it can park in any lots specified on a map maintained by the town, and pay $75 to be a vendor.

Below are some additional photographs I have taken of the Carrboro food truck scene over the last few years. At the end of the post, you can see a map of where food trucks are commonly found in town, and the coverage area bound by those locations.

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Fitch Lumber Taco Truck

Fitch Lumber Taco Truck

Crepe Truck at Fifth Season Parking Lot

Crepe Truck at Fifth Season Parking Lot

Ice Cream Truck at Seagrove Pottery

Ice Cream Truck at Seagrove Pottery

Evening Benefit Food Truck Rodeo at Farmers' Market

Evening Benefit Food Truck Rodeo at Farmers’ Market

 

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Below is a map of regular food truck locations in Carrboro. Zoom out slightly for a full view. View Carrboro Food Truck Locations in a larger map #informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #5: Outdoor Dining

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One of the key features that differentiates an urban place from more suburban places is the number of people on the streets. While many of the people out and about are walking from one place to another, many of them are quite stationary, often at a table enjoying food and drink. In his masterpiece on cities and towns, A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander states:

“We know that people enjoy mixing in public, in parks, squares, along promenades and avenues, in street cafes. The preconditions seem to be: the setting gives you the right to be there, by custom; there are a few things to do that are part of the scene, almost ritual: reading the newspaper, strolling, nursing a beer, playing catch; and people feel safe enough to relax, nod at each other, perhaps even meet.”

Outdoor Dining - Milltown

Outdoor Dining – Milltown

Alexander is observing what we all know- people like to be around other people, and cafe culture is perhaps human civilization’s best invention for providing people-watching opportunities.  But although there are plenty of people-watching opportunities inside any eating or drinking establishment, the deliberate move to provide outdoor seating, which always introduces extra labor hassles to the establishment, is a recognition that there are people-watching opportunities outside along the street as well as in the cafes, bars, and restaurants themselves.

That being the case, if we are searching for indicators of where people walk, outdoor dining/cafe seating should be a good guide.  And boy, does Carrboro have a lot of outdoor dining.  The least expected place? Burger King!  Yes, it’s a very suburban setup at Willow Creek shopping center, and your view is mostly people parking nearby, but even BK put out a few tables and a shrubbery. Good for them.

Outdoor Dining- Burger King

Outdoor Dining- Burger King

 

Here are some tables along West Main Street at Tres Amigos.

Outdoor Dining - Tres Amigos

Outdoor Dining – Tres Amigos

Including these three locations, even if we ignore food trucks that might have their own seating (i.e. Fitch Lumber taco truck), I found a total of 17 Outdoor Dining locations in Carrboro. Here they are on a map, each identified with a burger and beverage icon:


View Outdoor Dining in a larger map

While I was not surprised, it is worth noting that there is no Outdoor Dining at Carrboro Plaza.  Most of the rest of the town that has any commercial development has found some space for Outdoor Dining. If you’ve been following the blog this week, you’re probably starting to see a pattern in the maps, which I will cover in an upcoming post.

#informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #4: Yarn Bombing

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Whereas the Super Strudel graffiti was likely the work of one artist, the February 2012 Yarn Bombing of downtown Carrboro was a coordinated work of many skilled artists who sought (and received) permission from the town of Carrboro to put their pieces in the public realm. Below are some photos of some of the Yarn-bombed sites, and a map of where they were ultimately located, which reflects the combined decisions of town representatives and artists.

Yarn Bombed Tree, Looking Glass Cafe

Yarn Bombed Tree, Looking Glass Cafe

Yarn-Bombed Parking Lot

Yarn-Bombed Parking Lot (Photo by Flickr User RubyJi)

Yarn-Bombed Town Hall

Yarn-Bombed Town Hall (Photo Courtesy Carrboro Citizen)


View Yarn Bombing in Carrboro in a larger map

#informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #3: Municipal Holiday Light Displays

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Snowflake Above WSM Lawn

Snowflake Above WSM Lawn

With Christmas 2012 quickly receding into memory, here’s an indicator that you need to measure while you can: holiday light displays put up by the town! Our earlier indicators from this week, Graffiti and Fliers, reveal mental maps of walkable space of a single individual and many individuals acting separately.

Community holiday lights on telephone poles or buildings reveal what is probably a resource-constrained consensus decision made by several individuals together in our public works department, perhaps in consultation with the Town Manager.

This one was rather easy to map- I just got in the car and drove all over town in any direction I saw a snowflake until I passed the last lighted pole.  If I continued east into Chapel Hill I would have more data, but I had somewhere to be and went home after observing the extent of holiday snowflakes in Carrboro.

In the map below, the roads marked in red are where the snowflakes were posted, and the green area is the overall zone of coverage they surrounded using the furthest extent of snowflakes in each direction.

Holiday Snowflake Extent, Carrboro 2012

Holiday Snowflake Extent, Carrboro 2012

#informalurbanindicators

Informal Urbanism Indicator #2: Fliers

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Fliers in Carrboro

Fliers in Carrboro

If you’re trying to determine where the hotspots of the urban fabric begin and end in a neighborhood, you would be hard pressed to find a better indicator than fliers on telephone poles, walls, and other surfaces.  Fliers are great indicators for the following reasons:

1. They’re usually time-limited.  The constant refreshing of flier locations re-validates that these locations are important to pedestrians.

2. They can be layered on top of each other.  Some flier locations develop a 2-to-5 flier thick coat of promotional verbiage and graphics.  Like the rings on a tree stump where more rings equals more years, more fliers stapled on top of each other indicates a stronger advertising location.

With the second quality of flier placement, we can actually gather data on flier density in addition to flier locations.  I’ve started using a smartphone app called Fulcrum to gather data on fliers, including flier density, and although it will take a while to get a data set like the one for the Super Strudel post, I do intend to map it and try some analytical techniques on the data if it makes sense.

The key point that is great about fliers, however, is that whenever you see repeated postings of new fliers from different people and organizations at the same place, you’re looking at a place that is important across MANY people’s mental maps of their community, and most likely within the heart of the walkable urban fabric.

#informalurbanindicators