Lincoln restaurants try everything but the kitchen sink to stay afloat

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Local businesses say they are battling a tough economy, trying to stay afloat.

Twenty-one restaurants shut their doors in the capital city last year, according to Grow Lincoln.

And the difficulties continue in 2024, with Goodly Cookies downtown among the most recent closures.

The owner of The Coffee House, Mark Shriner, said it’s been a challenge to keep customers coming in because people don’t have as much disposable income.

“If I was opening right now with no customer base, forget about it,” Shriner said. “It would be game over no matter how good my stuff is.”

He said he’s added incentives like punch cards to keep his regulars coming back.

“We used to have customers that didn’t make any money but would still come in to get a coffee because it was 69 cents back then in 1989,” Shriner said.

Mike Ball with NAI FMA Realty looks at commercial vacancies across Lincoln.

He said many businesses close because they are too dependent on certain customers.

He mentioned Rosie’s, a downtown bar that shut its doors back in January. He said the bar was reliant on Husker games for most of its revenue.

“With anything, you have to give someone a reason to come see you and try your product,” he said, “Once they’re there, they say, ‘This is a really good product.’ So I think a lot of it is getting the interest of people coming to you first.”

Cody Schmick owns three downtown bars, including Sideshow Spirits. He said it’s been tougher recently to get people out of their homes and into his bars.

“From craft breweries closing to restaurants and bars, I feel like we’ve seen more closing announcements this year than the past 10 for sure,” he said.

Schmick said he’s been working on bringing more customers in by hosting events and having live music.

“The economy, we can’t control that,” he said. “So what we’re trying to do is do the best with the things we can control and hope our city, state and federal government can make commonsense legislation to keep us moving forward, to keep us here and to keep doing cool things in Lincoln.”