D-D-D-Did You Say Downtown Dining?
As you may have read in my story April 10 in the Journal (Cat’s Corner story), Cat’s Corner Café is for sale. Two of the owners have personal reasons for getting out, and I believe the owners when they say the business is on a solid footing.
At the same time, I can tell the owners always wished that business was a little better.
Cat’s mainstay was lunch. But it had served dinner when it opened in June 2001. It nuked dinner after 9/11 because it wasn’t bringing in the bodies.
Cat’s tried at least once to resurrect dinner, but customers weren’t biting — even as downtown started to pick up.
Catt’s also experimented with breakfast to no avail.
All of this points to the tricky nature of successfully running a downtown restaurant in Winston-Salem.
From what I can tell, restaurant customers want a cheap, under $10 meal downtown during the day, and they want the feel of fine dining at modest prices at night.
As a result, such places at Cat’s Corner do bang up business at lunch, but can’t bring it in at dinner.
Sweet Potatoes is one example of a model that works — modestly priced, nice but not too nice, and, of course, very good food.
Other restaurants struggle, though.
Camel city Café has very good food and a great wine list, but failed to attract people at lunch, and even seems too fine dining for folks around here to fill up at nights. And the prices are quite reasonable. Is that just the Stevens Center restaurant curse? I don’t think so.
It seems like the perfect model of a restaurant in our downtown is one with schizophrenia: a place willing to churn out $6 tuna salad and burgers all day long at lunch, then changes in quasi-fine dining accompanied by only quasi high prices at night.
