Local businesses happy to see foliage, and students

Author: Dina Magaril

The outdoor seating may have been full at Tully and Marie's this past weekend and students may have made reservations at their favorite eateries, but the consumer attitude in Middlebury was very different just a few months earlier. While fall foliage season is famed here in photogenic Vermont, summer "business was good but it could always be better," is a saying many local establishments have adopted as their mantra after the decline in business this past summer.

The foliage season is particularly busy for the restaurant industry as tourists rush in from Massachusetts, New Jersey and sometimes as far as Canada to see the famous Vermont autumn. But, the summer tourist rush has always been one that local businesses have counted on. Although tourists who are drawn to Vermont in the summer often choose to stay in Burlington overlooking the shores of Lake Champlain, even businesses in Burlington have felt the reverberations of the current lull.

While Tara Vaughn-Hughes, the owner of the Eat Good Food Grill Bar and Deli that opened in Middlebury in February of 2005 explained,"We don't really have a past history [so] it's hard to know [how to make a comparison]." Her restaurant's floor manager Melissa D'Amico reported that, "Talking to a lot of the surrounding restaurants it seems like everyone's numbers were cut in half." Vaughn-Hughes seconded this sentiment when she considered that her other business - a Vergennes restaurant similar to Eat Good Food - "was not as good as we had hoped it would be." These sentiments echoed throughout the community, and among local merchants - many of whom have been in business in Middlebury longer than Vaughn-Hughes' new restaurant. They have their own suspicions about the causes of this summer's slump.

Jeff Costello, the general manager at the Middlebury Inn pointed to the impact weather has on the travel industry as one cause of the drop in consumer sales he noticed this summer. He, at least partially, attributes the lack of tourists in Middlebury this summer to heavy rainfall in June. "If it's raining in Boston and it's raining in Vermont, then why would people go to Vermont?" he said. The peak season for business at the Inn ranges from October to July, said Costello, who saw a drop in business this past June because of bad weather. August, however, proved sunnier this year and tourism was "higher than usual" during that month as the Inn saw more walk-ins than usual.

Karen Rowland, the office manager at Fire and Ice pinpointed yet another potential cause of the decline in business in Middlebury that she, too, noticed. "The high price of gas was really a concern for some of our customers," said Rowland, explaining why many regular customers have stayed away. "Many of [them] come from far away distances and now, instead of coming once a week they come once a month," she said.

Eat Good Food's D'Amico spoke about the domino effect caused by higher gas costs. "People spend more money on gas so they have less money for other things. Eating out used to be the norm and now it has now become a luxury." And, because of such high gas prices, Vaughn-Hughes said, a compound effect is taking place, causing food vendors to include surcharges on deliveries made to the restaurant because of the extra dollars they spent for their own gas charges.

One of the manager's at Mr. Up's said she was concerned that fewer tour buses than usual were stopping at her establishment. Furthermore, she believed that the declining pool of customers dining out was divided by the growing competition among new eateries in Middlebury - not excluding Eat Good Food. When asked how Mister Ups was trying to bring in more customers the manager interviewed said, "by the time [we] realized business was going down there was nothing we could do about it. We had already hired new staff so we just had to deal with it."

Though bad weather and the price of gas were issues specific to the decline of business this past summer, the simple fact that Middlebury loses customers when students return home for the summer is an important factor. "I don't think businesses realize how dependent they are on the college," said D'Amico, who said business immediately went down during the days following graduation. She cited parent's weekends at the College as times when business is sure to soar, but added that the language school customers and tourists usually balance out the loss.

But it's not just the students at Middlebury who contribute to the local business economy. Lorri Sperry, owner of The Rainbow Room, does not see the College as separate from the larger Middlebury community and is quick to point out that families of students, faculty and staff all help her numbers go up. In fact, Sperry said her business fared even better than it had in the summer of 2005. She said sales increased in late May and June when students from the surrounding high schools were getting ready for prom and parents were buying graduation gifts for their children.

Sperry, however, remarked on the potentially positive effects of increased gas prices. "I think higher gas prices actually kept people closer to home," said Sperry. She believes that because of this, more of her customers decided to shop locally and less people were inclined to drive out to Burlington or Rutland for their shopping needs. Though Sperry was worried that the construction in town would harm her business she said the renovations did not seem to interfere at all and instead encouraged customers to stay closer to home. "People are getting the message that by shopping locally they are keeping the dollars for local organizations," said Sperry.

Despite disappointing turnouts many local restaurants found innovative ways to draw in their clientele. Eat Good Food proposed a $35 prix fixe menu on Thursdays that consists of all locally bought ingredients as well as free food at the bar every Wednesday night. Fire and Ice added some lower-priced entrees to their menu and created a new pub with the hopes of bringing in more people who wanted a casual meal out. "For some reason it seems that people come to [Fire and Ice] mostly on special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries," Rowland said. She added, "The addition of the new pub was created to send out the message that Fire and Ice was not just for special occasions but, instead, was a place where you could come in for a burger and a beer."

With the coming of autumn, local business owners hope to encounter a more stable season, especially since gas prices are starting to level out, dropping as much as 20 cents from last May's highs.