FORT WORTH, Texas — Despite a 40-year career of successful restaurants across Texas and multiple other states throughout the south, Dallas restaurateur Shannon Wynne announced Thursday that one of his highly-acclaimed Fort Worth efforts will become a casualty of the economic damage wrought by COVID-19.
Bird Cafe, an anchor tenant of Sundance Square, will close on May 22.
"We're very, very sorry to have to close under these conditions," Wynne told WFAA.
Located in the historic Land Title building, and formerly the nearly two-decade home of Wynne's original Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, Bird Cafe's seven-year run will end next Friday, Wynne said.
"This is definitely COVID-driven," he said. "It's harder to make it work when something like this happens."
What he says has happened, unlike his other restaurants including multiple Flying Saucer Draught Emporiums, his Flying Fish restaurants, Rodeo Goat, and Meddlesome Moth in Dallas, is that a large fine-dining restaurant can't survive on to-go orders, or even 25 percent or 50 percent capacity.
"It's a lot more expensive to operate at 25 percent occupancy than it is curbside. And way more expensive to operate at 50 percent occupancy than it is at 25. So until we get to a point that we could operate at 70 percent or above, it's not doing us any favors," Wynne said.
""It's very difficult for a larger fine-dining restaurant, full service, to operate curbside. So the economics just aren't there." Wynne continued.
"This was a great place. And we're going to miss it," said downtown Fort Worth resident Wendy Hunter, who with her husband Scott, stopped by Bird Cafe for one last evening drink when they heard the news of the impending closure.
"It's just such a wonderful interaction with folks," Scott Hunter said. "And to see it go away, it really pains you."
"It looked very hopeless to us. We could not see a way out," Wynne said of his decision to close while still being able to pay his vendors in full. "The future is so uncertain, and we need to make a decision before we lost what remaining cash we had."
Wynne said the 40 employees at Bird Cafe, with the help of a PPP loan, will be paid through the middle of June. But that by next Friday, Bird Cafe will be among the estimated 20 to 30 percent of Texas restaurants that the Texas Restaurant Association predicts will not survive the economic damage of forced COVID-19 restrictions and shutdowns.
"And hope that this is not going to be just the first of the series to happen," Wynne said.