“Nobody really cares about supporting local.”
That bold statement comes from Russell Birk, owner of the now-closed Maya’s Modern Mediterranean in Casa Linda and current Venturity advisory services chief financial officer. Birk says the only time “shop local” mattered was during the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, using that kind of language to get people into local restaurants isn’t enough to really move the needle for businesses.
Maya’s, which opened its East Dallas location at the end of 2018, actually saw an increase in sales during the pandemic and hit its peak in the years following 2020.
“Then, 2024 rolls around, and it’s like the rug just got pulled out from under us,” Birk says.
If you’re wondering how an establishment can make it through 2020 but not 2025, remember the emphasis put on supporting local restaurants during the pandemic by ordering takeout. Those attitudes have faded as restrictions were lifted and customers were able to return in full force.
Then came inflation.
In 2021 and 2022, the rate of change in prices over the course of a year reached highs that hadn’t been seen in decades, though that has come down since.
“Rising costs of food, rising costs of labor — people are feeling it at the gas pump to the grocery store to the dining room table at a restaurant,” says Corey Mobley, lead executive director of Texas Restaurant Association chapters. “Some of those costs are relayed back to the consumer. There’s really no other way about it. We have small, razor-thin margins as it is in this industry, so as prices increase on the product that we buy, unfortunately, the prices on the product that we sell have to increase to offset the rising costs.”
Jon Alexis, CEO of Imperial Fizz restaurant group (operator of Birdie’s Eastside, among other Dallas neighborhood eateries), has seen this significantly, even as sales are up.
“It costs more money to be busy,” Alexis says.
His establishments are avoiding radically raising prices and becoming “fancy restaurants.”
“The restaurant that’s charging $80 for a steak can charge $85 for a steak tomorrow, and nobody really notices,” Alexis says. “But a $20 entree that becomes $25 is a much bigger shock to a guest and changes who you are in the DNA of a restaurant.”
If menu prices aren’t going up, then in Alexis’ experience, inventory stewardship has to be more efficient.
“It’s twice as expensive now to overorder something. It’s twice as expensive now to burn a piece of fish,” he says. “Restaurants are like sports. You win on the good plays, but you also get penalized on the bad plays, and every single little mistake costs more now, so you have to be even more of a detailed manager of the restaurants.”
Some operators also noticed changes in consumer habits.
“The people who are at my price point are dining out less, and then people gravitate toward more comfort foods,” Birk says. “Maya’s food was perceived as healthy and perceived as a little bit more expensive, even though we really weren’t (more costly).”
Jen and Marty Reyes, owners of the tiki bar Swizzle, the physical location of which on Greenville Avenue closed last year, noted a troubling trend in their industry — people are drinking less alcohol.
“We were making some great mocktails, and so I was like, ‘Man, but no one knows about them,’” Marty says. “No one wanted to drink those. They just wanted to drink like Topo Chico or water.”
Jen also described Swizzle as outside the realm of what Dallas folks wanted — whiskey and tequila while watching sports. It didn’t help that some folks had a different understanding of tiki than what the Reyeses created.
“Tiki is dark and escapism through dim light and high-proof cocktails,” Marty says. “Tropical is sitting on a beach drinking piña coladas. It’s totally different cultures.”
If Birk could do it all over again, he would have changed how he branded and marketed Maya’s, reminding customers to dine there again.
“If you open a restaurant today, you need to be TikTok ready, brand ready, Instagram ready,” he says, adding that it’s a “losing proposition” to use unbranded packaging for takeout orders. “You have to walk in, and this has to look like a place that you’re going to take a picture of.”
The Reyeses’ Tiki concept has done well on social media, but it also projected an alternate reality where Swizzle’s physical location was more successful.
“Social media was our friend, so that wouldn’t be something I would change at all,” Jen says. “I think social media is really the only thing keeping us afloat and still the only thing keeping us afloat. They only know about our pop-ups and our catering and stuff like that because of social media. So I think it’s our friend, but I also think it can make a place seem like it’s doing really well, even if it’s not.”
People haven’t stopped going out to eat. Restaurants are still opening and remain a major attraction. But diners today are moderating their decisions to get the right bang for their buck in terms of value and experience, Mobley says.
“You can go out to eat for lunch two times, and that would be the same cost to take your wife out to celebrate the anniversary for a nice dinner,” he says. “People are working; people are busy, too. I think we tend to fly through lunch hours sometimes and look down and say, ‘Oh man, we forgot to eat,’ which I guess is a good thing but also a bad thing for the restaurants.”
The Reyeses are optimistic that the Dallas food and drink economy will recover. They recommend supporting local food and drink establishments, especially the independent mom-and-pops that tend to need the most help, before they’re gone.
“If you’re going to go see a show at Granada and go, ‘Oh, we’ve always wanted to go over to this place here.’ Well, go that night,” Marty says. “Make it happen now because, more or less, you’re going to forget about it.”
Alexis has another take on consumer responsibility — they don’t have any. Going out to eat or drink should be the part of life that feels easy, he says, where shoulders drop from ears, and the world’s problems fade away if only for a moment.
“It’s our job to find the right value equation for them, and it’s their job to forget about life for a second and be the consumer,” Alexis says. “Everything is complicated. Man, your drink shouldn’t be. Your lunch shouldn’t be.”
