So what happened to Petworth Social Bar & Grill anyway?
/Petworth Social Bar & Grill inside the restaurant prior to opening.
Petworth Social Bar and Grill opened in December of 2022, replacing Taqueria del Barrio (and Domku before that). Before the restaurant opened, we conducted a survey of readers to see what kind of restaurant people wanted. The number one cuisine desired by readers was Indian, quickly followed by Italian. What everyone seemed to agree on was a family-friendly, affordable place to go.
When I first met with Petworth Social owner Ranu Rawat, he said he had originally wanted to open an Indian-cuisine restaurant, but the kitchen was not set up to adequately cook Indian. He met Chef James Oakley, and they came up with the idea of Southern comfort food, focusing on a Cajun-inspired menu. They wanted to become a go-to casual dining restaurant and bar for the neighborhood.
That isn’t quite what opened at 821 Upshur Street NW. Based on my conversation with the owner, the previous chef, the landlord and readers who ate there, it was more of a confused, pricey menu, with little-to-no advertising or outreach, staffing problems, operations issues and lastly, not enough business. The nail in the proverbial coffin was rent that is too high for the location. Ranu was paying — and the rent being asked now is still — $8,600 a month.
“That’s downtown, the Wharf, prices,” said one restaurant owner who didn’t want to be named. “You can’t ask that [in Petworth] and expect enough density to support it."
When I first met Chef Oakley at the restaurant in the fall of 2022, he told me he was a partner in the business, not an employee. I asked if that was a formal agreement, and he said no, that he and Ranu had shaken hands on it, and since he was planning the menu and cooking, he really was a co-owner. My takeaway from that conversation is that comment sure looked like a red flag. As nice as it sounds, businesses don’t succeed on handshakes, especially when two different people have ideas of who actually runs the restaurant. Then, a short few months after opening, Chef Oakley quit and left the business. Ranu wouldn’t say why Oakley left.
It didn’t take long for the pressure of filling the 80+ seats to get more intense. A restaurant that big needs either high menu prices, amazing food or lower-priced food with higher turnover. None of those happened. Instead, Petworth Social was rather empty most of the five days a week it was open.
“We needed to be open more,” Ranu said, “but we couldn’t do it. The restaurant is a little too big, and we had staffing issues. I can’t pay the rent.”
“We were told there was going to be lots of foot traffic,” Ranu said, explaining why he chose to rent the space at 821 Upshur Street. “But we never had lots of foot traffic. They oversold it, the foot traffic.”
After Chef Oakley quit, they struggled to find new kitchen staff to keep things moving. They were always understaffed with high turnover, said Daphne, Ranu’s wife. The small kitchen and staff issues meant they couldn’t push the food out quick enough.
They tried to bring in a new kitchen manager and new menu options. I tried them at a tasting, and most of them were delicious. But still, Ranu couldn’t get people in the door, in seats, and enough revenue generated.
Screen shot of the listing for the restaurant on the Metropolitan Restaurant Brokers website.
Ranu said he informed the landlord that he was having problems, and he asked them to lower the rent, but they declined.
So he placed the restaurant up for sale in June for $200,000, with a plan to close no matter what by the end of July. He said he didn’t tell the landlord about the plan to close the doors and walk away from the lease, but had made it clear to them he was struggling.
By late June the sale price dropped to $150,000. Ranu stopped me on the street and told me he was going to sell the business, but asked that Petworth News not publish because he didn’t want the employees to find out. He hoped to have a new owner in quickly with no impact on them.
But then in July the price dropped to $99,000. I interviewed Ranu and his wife Daphne on the phone at the beginning of July, and they were scared to have any article published, fearing it would scare away potential buyers. By mid-July, the price dropped again to $50,000. Ranu said there was some interest expressed by potential buyers, but there were no takers. Instead, by the end of July, he walked away from the restaurant.
Ranu had hoped to find a way to stay open, and said back in early July that they hadn’t given up. But his hour-long drive, in conjunction with the staffing issues, the high rent and the slow business, made the desire to stay open too hard.
“It’s really unfortunate,” said a local business owner who asked not to be named. “I hate to see someone make an investment and have it come to an end so quickly.”
“But Petworth Social was doomed to fail from the jump,” the other local business owner said. “The rent is too high, and the street is now over-valued. The neighborhood is great, but it doesn’t have the density to support the new lease rates being asked. That location at that rent would need to bring in $1.2 million a year to be successful.”
What we need in the area, the other business owner said, is more density and lower rents.
“Look, any restaurant has a very limited number of hours to be profitable. We pay rent for 24-hours but might only be open 4-hours a day. Once Prop 82 goes into affect, people are going to be shocked. Service charges and higher food costs are going to impact restaurant profits and how often people will be willing to go out to eat.”
"As owners of the property, we were very surprised and saddened by Petworth Social's sudden closure,” wrote Lynn Yaudes, one of the owners of the building at 821 Upshur, in an email response. “But [we] remain optimistic that the next tenant in the space will open a restaurant with fantastic food and great service that the community will love.”
That’s to be seen. From my conversations with other restaurants and businesses on Upshur, they are doing well, or well enough. San Matteo has just opened up next to the now-closed Petworth Social, serving high-end Italian food. The landlords are the same for both locations (different restaurant owners), and hopefully the food at San Matteo, with its new ambience, cool interior design and expanded seating, along with a higher-priced menu, will keep it going.
What 821 Upshur needs is a concept that will resonate with the neighborhood for both dine-in and take out, with affordable prices, a good local bar scene and an owner that caters to the residents so they can fill the seats. They just have to do all that and pay the rent.
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