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| Apparently Rogers and Fayetteville aren’t the only places in Northwest Arkansas where restaurants open and close faster than the mouths of local business boosters and spinners.Another restaurant fatality occurred this week when Stacy’s Cafe on the Bentonville Square went out of business. No surprise here. We expect dozens more restaurants in Northwest Arkansas to close in the coming months. I hope aspiring restaurant entrepreneurs (especially those from out-of-town) take note and give second thoughts about taking a similar fatal plunge in the neighborhoods of Northwest Arkansas.
Local business boosters are in high gear blaming everything, except the fact there are way too many restaurants for the area. The truth is, folks built dozens of restaurants across Northwest Arkansas expecting massive growth that simply never came – and probably won’t come during our lifetime. Sure, cheap little Mexican fast-food joints, operators with deep local ties and a building owned by mom and dad, corporate-owned faux-Italian/Chinese, and burger/chicken drive-thrus will continue to pop-up catering to vendors and low income immigrants, but those operators have (had) deep pockets. For everyone else, it’s now a fool’s game – especially out-of-towners investing in a restaurant gig. Mom, who tosses hash and eggs at customers at the local pancake joint, warns aspiring restaurant owners to “keep prices low, hustle customers at your church, and throttle-back on your lifestyle.” Excuse abound over what went wrong at Stacy’s. 40/29 gives one angle: http://ow.ly/OZUa |
Everyone is writing me these days wondering why I’m not spewing my usual volume of banter on this awesome blog of mine (awesome is my word – not theirs).
It seems some readers have gotten used to me writing with the same predictability and hot steam as that geyser which spouts-off in Yellowstone Park.
The answer: blame it on Twitter. We’ve fallen victim to the spell of Twitter. Well not really…We’re not a victim of Twitter-dom.
No, we’re just succumbing to laziness, a spell-check-free world, and a busy schedule (attending speeches, working double-shifts, ranting and raving, and generally pissing everyone off around town with the truth about our neighborhood). I just can’t find enough time to point out everything that’s wrong with this place in detail.
So, if you want the latest sound bytes on what’s going wrong with our neighborhood, check us out on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nwarkansas. I promise to keep it under 140 letters and spaces.
According to data released Tuesday by the Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average Arkansan earned $31,266 in 2008, ranking 47th among states for average per capita income. Northwest Arkansas-specific data will be released by the government in about six months.
