Heartbreaking news has landed in Dallas as one of its renowned restaurants Modest Rogers closes a year after it opened according to o a Dallas Observer article. They say,
“Modest Rogers on Fairmont Street, just off Oak Lawn Avenue, announced Monday it has closed. Owner and chef Modesto “Mo” Rodriguez made the announcement via Instagram, thanking everyone.
“With a heavy heart we have decided to close Modest Rogers,” the post reads.
But the math didn’t work. Rogers told The Dallas Morning News that even on busy nights, the small space couldn’t turn enough profit to keep up with constant repairs. This summer he expanded to Saturday brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. but that evidently wasn’t enough.”
The small restaurant couldn’t turn enough profit to keep up with the costs and its owner and Chef Modesto Rodriguez somehow expected the outcome as he saw the stagnant progress of the restaurant according to Dallas Morning News article. They say,
“I was kind of already getting the feeling that this is where it was going. The money was going out and just not coming back in in the same amount,” he said. “I think the issue was it was too small of a place, and we didn’t have enough money to begin with to fix that space and its issues. It took so much to fix it that we had no money left to just run as a business.”
“I blindly went into something. I should have studied a little bit more about the space,” he said. “I let my vision blind me and said, ‘We can make it work.’ And we did for a year, but I always said we were cooking out of a food truck. I love the space and I think it still has great potential, but we spent money trying to fix things that weren’t related to the food. What we needed to fix was the size of the kitchen and get a flow down that was able to accommodate larger numbers. It killed us by not being able to accommodate more people.”
But all hope isn’t lost as Modesto Rodriguez promises that he will venture again and make this chapter of his life as his stepping stone to his next successful restaurant.
