At the end of this month, sandwich and fresh pasta purveyor Pasta Luego is shutting its doors in Arcata’s Jacoby Storehouse. Owner Nicole Maki started working at the shop in 2013, a few months after it opened, and bought it from restaurateur Bill Chino in 2016. Three years later, after struggling with the combination of an economic downturn and plaza panhandlers, she says, the financial hits of successive PG&E shutdowns were the last straw. She’s closing down her packaged pasta business, too, though she says, “I can always pick it back up.”
“Things just never took off. There’s a plateau level of customers,” says Maki. “I can’t sell more than 30 sandwiches a day. I don’t feel, even if I add elements, it’s gonna change.” She says she often hears customers at her shop and the neighboring toy store complain about the location. “We would love to see a children’s playground out there,” she says, adding that a family-friendly structure with police presence would curtail panhandlers. Her customers “don’t want to be accosted or panhandled or asked to buy drugs. And you can’t really walk through the plaza without those things.”
Maki says she’s seen a “definite decline,” both in the economy in general and downtown customers. “We’re paying extra rent to be in this beautiful place and half of us aren’t even enjoying being here.”
The recent planned PG&E shutdowns on Oct. 8 and Oct. 26 took their toll, too.
“These power outages just wiped me out and there’s no insurance for it because they’re scheduled outages,” says Maki, who estimates her total lost inventory and wages at around $4,000 to $5,000. In an effort to keep her stock of expensive meats cold, she locked down her refrigeration unit and closed the shop for the week, not wanting to risk opening before the expected Oct 29 blackout that never came. “That was definitely the final [thing]. I thought, ‘I gotta figure something out.’”
A founding member of the American Legion Women’s Auxiliary, Maki plans to spend more time at the Arcata Veterans Hall, where she is the event coordinator. Along with aiding the effort to “turn that into a kind of command center during blackouts and such,” as well as fundraising for improvements with brunches and other events, she’s looking into helping the hall open its own restaurant. It’s a project that, for her, dovetails with the auxiliary’s mission of helping veterans find their feet and community in the civilian world. And, she says, she’ll be relieved to stop worrying about the overhead of running her own shop.
“I don’t want to be in a business,” she says. “I’d rather work for a nonprofit.”
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This article appears in Paolo Todd.
At the stated cost of food, that would about $30 to make one sandwich..not too frugal!
I’ve been going to business in that building for years, from the basement (now Basement) to the top floor… and I’ve even been on the roof! I had no idea Pasta Luego was even there and I can’t recall ever having heard of the place.
Hey Nicole! This is the Picante Provolone guy here, like I was saying about the hot pepper hoagie relish and whatever else might set subs apart from the competition: I think with a super streamlined menu and a much smaller retail space free of panhandlers, and I’m sure that outrageous rent there at that location, we could give that “other local sandwich shop” a real run for their money! Food sales are tricky and work on tight margins, but I think we could relaunch in a new spot and kill it!
Yes, the east coast style flavor profiles might be a bit bold at first for the natives but I really think awesome taste and a good value would win in the end…
Let’s grab a Sysco sales rep and see what we can put together?
I have a really good approach for the sub rolls that would cut cost while increasing the quality and control of the finish product too.
If you’re interested in chatting drop me a line here.
Ciao!