Demo's Closed

Florence isn't going anywhere. Resturants are a revolving door business.

That's a surprise t o me. Every time I went the place was crowded. Wonder what happened. 

Demos' was their own undoing in my opinion.  Either they priced their product such that they couldn't make a profit given their cost, which I don't know is right, or some of their policies disenfranchised their customer base.  

I do know that one adjustment they made was to do away with the soup/salad that was included with all entrees and the kids meals but yet kept their menus that said free soup/salad.  Seems minor to me but I did hear many say the soup/salad was one reason they came demos' but when demo's started adding a dollar to each meal for the salad or soup I guess people decided to stop going and business dropped off dramatically.  

I don't know the exact reasons but just guessing but I suppose Florence was one of the locations that Demo's was losing money on so instead of keeping it open and having other stores make up for whatever losses they were incurring here at the Florence store.   I too though thought that the Florence location was always crowded at least up till they took the soup and salad away from the meals then I noticed a marked reduction in business.

Wow, a whole entire dollar for soup and salad? Why that's fifty cents a piece. How dare they!!

It seems like I commented on a thread that already had this ****le on it? I wonder why we need two threads pertaining to this subject?

Restaurants are a tough business.  When you've got more outgo than ingo, the business has got to go.

Their other restaurants are in places like Murfreesboro, Lebanon, downtown Nashville and Goodlettsville--and draw business from much larger retail markets than Florence.

If Demos couldn't pay for that building, any restaurant that goes in there will have a difficult time covering their expenses.

If other restaurants in our cities have marginal waiters/servers, they need to contact Demos for employee referrals.  Demos' people did a great job.

I spoke with one of Demos' prior waitresses and managers who now works at another restaurant and she mentioned that the waitresses and help had prior concerns about the restaurant closing and voiced those concerns and were always reassured that Demo's would not close, at least right up to the very end.  They still denied it but the obvious drop off in business and lack of business was the writing on the wall to most of the people there. 

Still she said that until the very last she always thought they did enough business to warrant keeping the restaurant open and that no one really knows why the location here actually closed as what they were given as the reasons didn't really seem valid given their level of business right up until the last month. 

In other words it's almost as if they self-inflicted the harm upon themselves.  Almost like a self fulfilling prophecy.  Now I don't know how much of what she said is right but it is hard to see a place not being able to make it with the amount of business that I usually saw at Demos at any one time.  She did though say that the last month it was open was such that it was like the owners didn't really care about this location at all and had pre-determined that it would close so began making changes in the way they did business which precipitated drops in their popularity and their business.  She said around three weeks prior to the actual closing most employees felt the writing was on the wall even though the owners still denied it when ask.

They got into politics and it backfired, for one thing.  For another they said they hadn't raised prices since the 80s.  That is horrible business and ridiculous.  They served huge portions at those 80s prices, and then complained and blamed the political climate.  I hated to see them go since we enjoyed eating there, but you can't charge from the 80s, serve enough food for 20 bucks for a family of four to eat and take home to eat another meal, send out political comments disguised in surveys, and not expect to have to close your store.  The staff were great, the food was good, and we enjoyed it, but we saw problems coming and the "survey" and unprofessional comments were the nail in their coffin as far as we could see.  It is unfortunate.