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Reply to "SPERRY's No Longer, at least in Florence"

I loved Dales but felt it had gone down over the years and at the time it was sold it seemed that the quality had diminished and you couldn't always depend on getting a great meal so I was hopeful when the restaurant was purchased and heard that it would reopen after renovations.  

I think though that the whole process was plagued with problems from the start.  For one the building was in far worse condition than the buyer expected and from what I hear some say they would have come out better to just purchase land and start over from new.  

The one thing I never understood, even to today, is why buy out Dales then change so many things?   If they didn't want to be Dales why buy out Dales?  They came in and changed most everything.  No Dales sauce, French Onion Soup (highly dependent on Dales sauce) was totally different, the Steaks were totally different, the great Deserts that Dales had was no more and their fried shrimp was totally different.  In short Nothing was the same except the name and the bread sticks.   Because off that either the new owner was required to change the name from Dales to Sperry's because of all the changes that were not longer Dale's or the Owner just gave up and felt his product was so much superior to Dale's.  Something is just not right here because (again) why buy out Dales just to change Dales into something totally different?

I ate at Dales and ate at Sperry's.  Sperry's did have a good steak but not as good as Dales.  Sperry's did have a better Prime Rib though but their fried Shrimp, seafood and Deserts weren't near as good as Dale's with the exception of the Banana's Foster but the price and size was targeted toward serving it to two and even at that it was as expensive as a complete dinner at most places.  IF you are going to charge a very premium price then you need to justify it with a very premium product and they just didn't do that so they didn't maintain the Dale's business and build on it because they didn't maintain Dale's quality and build on that.  At least it will serve as a write off on the owner's taxes, an expensive one because I doubt they will get anything near what they invested back in the building and after all this time the Dale's name isn't going to bring what it did before and Sperry's name surely isn't going to sell in this area so it will most likely just be a vacant building.   

I've always hoped that someone would be able to open a DALE's in the building that Crocodile Ed's was in but then so many things have been there and failed that often you just have to tear down a building and start over because after a while it seems failure just follows a building/business.

Last edited by gbrk

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