The Bangor Daily News spoke to Wannawaf owner Anya Arsenault about the planned closure of her Portland location and thoughts what she might do next with the space.
But don’t count her out just yet.
Later this fall she may reinvent herself as a lunch caterer.
“I’m thinking of scrapping the waffle sign off the window and doing boxed lunches,” said Arsenault, who is looking for business partners. “I’m an entrepreneur. I still have to pay the rent.”
COBBLESTONES always seemed to draw a decent lunch crowd (myself included), so I was surprised to see them go and WANNAWAF take its place. My first thought was “Who would want waffles for lunch? It’s so heavy!” …And here they are closing. I wonder how much marketing research Wannawaf did before opening. Seemed there was a small demographic for such a specific cuisine. Seems like a better Food Truck outlet to me!
I talked with her tonight during First Friday as she was outside at a table selling t-shirts. Her rent there was ‘outrageous’, a complaint I heard from the owner of COBBLESTONES as well. WANNAWAF was, she said, losing so much money that’d was essentially offsetting the profits of the Boothbay WANNAWAF which only operates during the summer season but which she estimated would make in three months what this would in twelve months.
Furthermore, both her and COBBLESTONES operated under onerous lease restriction, i.e. COBBLESTONES couldn’t sell any hot drinks as the landlord, owner of OTHERS, very obviously didn’t want competition, and she bought all her coffee from OTHERS.
Local fans, she said, offered to do a Kickstarter style campaign for her but she turned down their offer.
Oh and COBBLESTONES was doing lousy there. That’s why he move to Saco.