We’re not the only ones who lost a Carrabba’s — the store at Preston Center closed as well, which means the closings almost certainly weren’t because of a problem with demographics or business. There’s a canned statement on a blog at Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper that doesn’t make much sense unless you know the restaurant business, citing "changing dynamics within the commercial environment surrounding the restaurant."
Apparently, as one commenter noted, the store is a casualty of the parent company’s recent sale to equity buyout groups led by Bain Capital. Bain is about as hard-nosed a bunch of guys as you’ll ever want to meet, and I still have nightmares about interviewing the Bain guy who ran Domino’s when Bain owned the pizza chain in the 1990s. I’m not sure he smiled once. Bain is not just about cutting costs and raising margins, but about doing it the Bain way. That means restaurants in neighborhoods that aren’t in fast-growing suburbs near expressways get closed, no matter how good business is.
I have a call in to Greg Pierce at Colliers International, whose company is leasing the space, but I haven’t heard from him yet. That’s going to be one very difficult space to fill. There isn’t a lot of quality retail that fits into 6,000 or so square feet with poor parking and limited access.
