What It's Like: Stories From Hospitality
Opening A Restaurant A Second Time Around
Stories of resilience and revival.
When a beloved restaurant closes, it’s not just the employees and owners who are affected. The community loses a pillar, too. In the first half of the 2020s, more than 70,000 restaurants shuttered across the U.S.
But the restaurant industry is an organic, highly human space. When a concept has fans in the dining room and a visionary team behind it, very little can keep it from being successful again. Not COVID, not money problems, not natural disasters.
Restaurants can reopen by finding new ownership, reimagining themselves in new spaces, or renegotiating leases with landlords. Here are two stories of beloved hospitality businesses that found new life in new iterations.
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Claude Bakery
NYC
Tucked away in a back office in Greenwich Village, Ace Homkaenjun is finally able to relax after a hectic morning of service. Claude, the neighborhood bakery that he and Chef Anthony Roonchareon revived in early 2024, is quiet. Homkaenjun reflects on what’s different and what’s the same about his operation and the bakery it used to be.
“We changed the name, yes. But the idea is to operate with the same passion as the old place.”
Chef Anthony Roonchareon. Via Instagram
The bakery used to be called Patisserie Claude, opened in 1982 by French émigré Claude LeBrenne. In 2008, longtime employee Pablo Valdez took the business over, continuing to put out Patisserie Claude’s famous croissants every morning. For more than forty years, the bakery produced the same offerings: plain and almond croissants, pain au chocolat, raisin Danishes, and more.
In 2023, Valdez sold the business to Roonchareon and Homkaenjun, two newcomers to the Village. The former, who goes by Chef Tony, was already working as the Executive Pastry Chef at Electric Lemon, the health-focused restaurant attached to Hudson Yards’ expansive new Equinox. The two had a clear idea for what had to change and stay the same about the bakery.
Via Instagram
While the bakery had a loyal following, the new partners, who operate under the company name Claude82, felt that inefficient operations and a dated look had to change. First up was addressing the effects of inflation on the store’s output. “Chef Tony and I are trying to keep the quality high while lowering the price,” says Homkaenjun.
“A lot of stuff was getting thrown into the garbage,” reports Roonchareon. By tightening up the baking process, he believes, they can serve the neighborhood better — and build up a new fanbase. “If we were operating from a pure profit motive, we would say, ‘Let’s start making everything organic, because then we can charge fifty cents more.’ Instead, we want to use that margin to lower the cost.”
The new team also made changes to the look of the croissants. “Some of the people who have been coming here for years don’t like it,” says Homkaenjun. “But new customers coming in appreciate that we’ve updated the products.”
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The Bento Box
Chicago
Chicago chef Rick Spiros learned the hard way what it takes to build an enduring restaurant brand. All it took was losing his restaurant.
One fateful day in March 2020, Chef Rick Spiros’ life changed when his restaurant was forced to close. And not for the reason you’re thinking.
“I got the call in the middle of the night,” he recalls. A fire had destroyed the space where he was operating two businesses: Artisan Catering in the back and The Bento Box, Spiros’ Asian concept (not related to our company) occupying a tiny Bucktown storefront. “It was the week before COVID,” Spiros says. Just like that, the chef went from overworked to out of work.
Like so many in the industry, Spiros spent the next four years in a state of productive convalescence from restaurant life. At first, he was happy to move on from The Bento Box. When things opened up, he worked as a private chef. “Ninety-eight percent” of his business came from fans of his former restaurant, but Spiros appreciated the flexibility of a small operation. The stress of managing two businesses for a decade — the last two years of which were without his founding business partner — were crushing. He was grateful to scale back.
“For the last four years, people have asked me if I’m going to open up another restaurant,” Spiros says. “The answer has been ‘F— no.’”
But in August 2024, Chef Spiros had “a change of heart.” He began to operate a three-day-a-week pop-up in Logan Square’s Trogo Kitchen & Market under the old Bento Box umbrella. Spiros credits a period of experimentation and freedom with finally leading him to reviving his most celebrated brand.
Chef Rick Spiros. Via Trogo
“The last six months have really taught me what it takes to establish a new concept,” Spiros reflects. In early 2024, he launched a sushi concept called Sushi Ricky. Months later, he had designs on soft launching a taco concept. Ultimately, he realized that he had all the freedom he wanted, and all the brand equity he had earned, in The Bento Box.
“Until you try to establish something new, you don’t realize how much work it takes,” Spiros says. “That’s when I realized: I have something. I built this thing. I would rather do a special night as The Bento Box — Italian night or Indian night — than try to establish something that doesn’t have a decade of sweat and blood in it.”
The restaurant was always intentionally small, which allowed Spiros to keep everything human-sized and obsess over quality. “I only have two vendors. On a busy night we’re serving 25 people,” he says. “Any more than that, and I can’t walk around, talk to people, have my hands in everything the way I want to.” Spiros’ most famous concept, in other words, already had all the flexibility he needed.
Reviving a concept
In the years after COVID, the restaurant industry bounced back slower than other sectors. Contributing significantly to that glacial revival was a pervasive sense of fatigue from restaurant professionals like Rick Spiros and former Patisserie Claude owner Pablo Valdez. But the restaurant world is one full of fighters, and creators, and fierce independence. As long as customers love a restaurant concept, a second life is possible.
“I tried to move on from The Bento Box name at first,” Chef Spiros says. “It wasn’t until I did that I realized that concept represents what’s most fulfilling to me. It’s my baby, you know? It’s me.”
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Opening a New Restaurant?
Help customers find you. 80% of diners search online before visiting a restaurant.
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