With rental costs for his Bay Street location 40 percent higher than the rent at his three other locations combined, the local franchisee for Sbarro, the Italian eatery, has blamed escalating business costs for the decision to close his downtown location after 14 years.
Pointing to "the cost of doing business" in an environment where "the bottom fell out" following the recession of 2008, Charlton Knowles, managing director of Sbarro in The Bahamas, said it was "luck" that he was able to maintain a presence downtown for so long.
"After the recession of 2008 things were going downhill then. We just never recovered to be able to handle the cost of doing business. The cost increase in that five years in terms of food alone was probably about 10 to 15 percent. Then there is the fixed expense of rent. We tried to negotiate that, but it was not enough to make it work for us. We should've closed it down when the recession came in. It was just too big of a building we had. Then with the drop-off in sales being so significant, we couldn't keep it going indefinitely, waiting for a miracle," said Knowles in an interview with Guardian Business.
The tourism-dependent Bay Street operation closed its doors on Sunday. It has become the second major downtown restaurant to shut its doors in less than two months, following the closure of the Hard Rock Cafe on Charlotte Street in early April. That franchise is reopening under a new franchisee, Marvin Pinder, the former landlord of the previous franchisees.
In an emailed response to questions about the closure of the restaurant on Bay Street, Knowles pointed to "high rent, food cost, electricity cost, the impending value-added tax (VAT), the NIB (National Insurance) ceiling increase proposal and NHI's (National Health Insurance) impending passage" as among the reasons why he felt now was the time to axe the location.
He said that of the ten staff employed at the Bay Street restaurant, four will be let go, while the remainder have been redeployed to the company's other locations in the Carmichael Road Plaza, Cable Beach and the Mall at Marathon.
"The company overall is doing quite well. The other three units are performing great," said Knowles.

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