Restaurant Owner Braves Covid-19 by Making Bold Moves

April 2020

In our last 26 years as business brokers here in Las Vegas, we’ve learned small business and entrepreneurship amount to perseverance. Linda Kutcher of Grape Vine Café’ is a great case in point.

We are proud to have assisted Linda in the purchase of her dream café back in 2015. Linda decided to make her dream a reality by purchasing a successful restaurant, putting her 27+ years of restaurant management experience to work. I caught up with Linda to ask how her restaurant was faring amid new state mandates.

Linda said, “We did curbside carry out the first week and it was bringing in revenue, but then we sat and discussed the situation and the reality of how long this pandemic would affect our business.” Linda continued by commenting, “I’m not sure if you recall, but the floor had needed resurfacing since we purchased the restaurant in November 2015 and there was other work that we needed to do on the walls, the coving, and the drains.” 

So, Linda and her partner Moeen Taqi made the bold decision to upgrade. Linda went further to say, “We estimated it would take two to three weeks to do that work, and over the past four and a half years we had gone back and forth about how we were going to get everything done, because every piece of equipment would need to be moved out of the kitchen which would require us to close. We looked at this as the perfect opportunity of a time block where we were forced to be closed and it would have the least impact on our financial bottom line. It was a hard decision because it was an expensive proposition.”  When I asked Linda how she and Moeen felt about their decision, she said, “We wanted to show our good faith towards our landlord and to our customers that we were willing to put money back into the business even when no income was coming in. It was our way of trying to turn lemons into lemonade.”

Moeen and Linda said the process has been stressful. Praying their customers have not forgotten them, they’ve done their best to keep their loyal Grape Vine Café customers updated, even selling their wonderful wines throughout the process.

Grape Vine Café will reopen this Wednesday, April 22^nd for curbside carry out. Linda said they plan to be open six days a week until they can reopen their dining room for service.

We here at First Choice Business Brokers applaud all business owners, including Linda and Moeen, and encourage you to stay strong.

America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Be Brave, we are in this together!   

Check out Grape Vine Cafe'.