After three years in Chestnut Hill, the Asian-inspired food truck turned brick and mortar restaurant Bon Me is closing its spot at the Chestnut Hill Square shopping area, Newton Patch reports.
Bon voyage Bon Me
by Village 14 | Aug 21, 2018 | Chestnut Hill, eating | 7 comments
That’s a shame.
The article reproduces a letter from Bon Me’s CEO who identifies lack of T access as making it a challenge to attract workers. Perhaps if the city and state invested more to make public transit ubiquitous and convenient, more businesses would stay in city.
It is a 1.5 miles. 20-25 minute walk. Or 9 minutes by bike. Too bad nothing was done during construction to make this area more walkable and bikeable. It is t too late. If people were willing to be creative.
When people ask why we need more varied housing in Newton, this is why.
Often when I tell people that restaurants and other retail can’t make a go of it here because of density and foot traffic, I’m met with the question of “don’t these businesses want the Newton demographic?”
Yes, they do, but it comes with a cost. The cost is that they can’t keep staff, who are often lower paid, because that staff must commute from a distance. Once the staff finds a job that provides a similar income with less time spent commuting, they take it.
Being accessible to the T is one solution, but so is a more varied housing stock that allows for different people to live in our community. No, not all of it will be affordable out of the gate, but if we play the long game we can make a change.
I don’t really buy the reason he says it’s closing. There are a lot of thriving restaurants that are not within close proximity of the T.
MMQC: Whether you buy it or not, doesn’t make it less true.
Hiring is an enormous problem for Newton employers in general and restaurant operators in specific. One hiring manager told me recently it has hit “crisis” level.
The Highlands could use a spot like Bon Me. There are quite a few open spots in the village.
While I do understand the difficulty of finding, keeping and transporting great low-wage employees in Newton, I think this is not the only reason Bon Me failed in Chestnut Hill.
On a daily basis, Bon Me (which I frequent every few months) could not compete with its neighbor SweetGreens (which I frequent twice a week). When SweetGreens has lines out the door (including tons of BC students and people fresh from a workout at Equinox or Soul Cycle), Bon Me has few customers (some people who do not want to wait in the SweetGreens lines). Whether it was food, customer service or branding, Bon Me was regarded as a third option (especially after VC-backed Oath Pizza opened). While a great food truck concept, Bon Me apparently has not translated well to a competitive storefront (unfortunately).