AJC Gets Answers on The Angel and Other Lawford Pub Closings
Decatur Metro | February 8, 2008Seems like we made enough noise about The Angel and Derek Lawford Pubs for the AJC to sit up and take notice.
Today’s paper confirms many of the rumblings we have heard about the metro chain over the past month or so and notes the “local blogs” that have been so vocal about it. (That’s us!…with the help of Around Midtown reporting on the other closed location, Prince of Wales.)
So, which “rumblings” did the article get clarity on?
1. Prince of Wales and The Angel are closed. However, the company is still contemplating reopening The Angel as a “chef-driven restaurant”. (That’s why Karen at The Chocolate Bar was rebuffed when inquiring about the space.)
2. All Derek Lawford Pub locations were closed at the beginning of the year due to expired liquor licenses. Only The Angel and Prince of Wales didn’t eventually reopen.
3. The pubs’ parent company has serious money problems. Here’s an except…
“[Co-owner Steven] Welch and four of the pubs are being sued by the lender, Kennesaw-based AdvanceMe Inc., that claims it is owed more than $565,000, according to court documents. Welch disputed the claims in the lawsuit, saying they are without merit.
The federal government says that another business owned by Welch and his partner owes more than $1.5 million in back taxes since 2002. That entity, Derek Lawford Co., filed for bankruptcy protection two weeks ago. Welch declined to talk about the bankruptcy other than to say he’s challenging the figure.”
Welsh also says in the article that he misread the Decatur market as a place for singles (like VA-Hi), when in fact we’re a community of tea-totaling soccer dads and moms. (Yeah, I think the Brick Store’s success alone negates this rationale. In fact, the Brick Store might be a big part of why The Angel couldn’t survive.)
Up until now, I’ve held back (for the most part) on giving my opinion on The Angel’s closing since we were dealing with a lot of rumors and speculation. But now that the AJC has been kind enough to do some digging (seriously, thank you AJC) I’m ready to get it all out there.
From the first day it closed, it seemed like the owners of The Angel had something to hide. Perhaps around metro Atlanta you can get away with being standoffish and secretive about your future plans by hiding amongst a sea of other restaurants that people frequent. But here in Decatur, one of the great things about being a close knit community is that we notice things. We notice that you changed your sign on the door from “due to a backlog of liquor licenses…” to “closed indefinitely” very quickly. We noticed that you didn’t reply to our email inquiries or post anything on your website. We noticed the sketchy details concerning your money problems (like in the AJC article) and how they affected the temporary closing of all Lawford pubs.
I, at least, would have preferred the owners be a little more upfront with our community. They strung us along while we thought there was a “backlog of liquor licenses”, when in fact it was a much larger financial problem. Now they say they’re closed BUT might open again under a different concept.
I say fish or cut bait. Stop jerking us around.
h/t: ks
Latest from Decaturish
It made me smile when I read the article and the mention of “local blogs,” but would it have hurt them to mention our sites by name? The extra traffic would have been nice.
I’m with ya Pat.
I almost wrote the same thing…the AJC should be just as obliged to hattip as any of us lowly bloggers.
It’s a matter of decorum! Decorum I say!
I’m a little surprised by the last two paragraphs in this entry. I don’t think that a private business owes details of its finances to the community at large. I’m not saying this as it relates to The Angel in particular, but as a general stance on business. Posting messages throughout the city to find out what’s happening with a restaurant doesn’t entitle you to answers. Would it enhance your reputation within the community? Possibly. Still, if you’re trying to work something out for financial difficulties and it ends up successful, as an owner, I wouldn’t necessarily want to share the details with everyone.
Plus, you aren’t owed anything because you spent your money there. If you pay $5 for a pint, you have decided that your $5 is worth the pint of beer. It isn’t worth $4.50 of beer and $0.50 worth of future information.
Thomas, your entry has me rethinking this post. Even when I originally wrote it, I was hesitant to post those last two paragraphs. Everyday I have to walk the line of how much opinion I write. For the most part I think I’m pretty even-handed. In this case, I obviously was not.
I don’t think I’m owed anything by The Angel because I spend money there. Perhaps the sentence about owning up to financial trouble was a bit too extreme. You are right that a business owner has enough trouble and heartache/burn without having to deal with a screaming, nosy public. It is not part of the local government, its private.
But I do believe that businesses have a certain responsibility in serving the local community. I believe that saying that you’re temporarily closed because of a “liquor license backlog” and then just closing up shop for other unexplained reasons is a little dishonest. That’s what got me a little annoyed. I expected better. That’s the only area I expected any sort of transparency. If you’re closing, tell the truth about why.
So for what its worth, I’ve reworked the opinion a bit.
To me, their lack of disclosure shows why they weren’t a good fit for this community. They initially created the impression that it was out of their hands and implied that we should feel sorry for them and mad at the State. I’m much happier calling a spade a spade.
No offense, dude, but this “businesses have a certain responsibility in serving the local community” stuff sounds like a hollow, yuppified version of plain old Southern gossip-mongering. With all due respect, cut the crap. You want to know because you want to know. It sates your ego or your curiosity or your need to know other people’s business. It also hints a bit at the double-standard limo-libs (with which Decatur is loaded) often apply to businesses. If the family next door were having money problems, would that be something you felt you had a right to know? If your answer is no -and I sure hope it is- why does a business have obligations to the community that a private household does not? And if, somehow, it does have additional obligations, why do they extend to letting the public in on its financial difficulties.
I mean, did it ever occur to you, during this (admittedly mild) bout of self-righteousness, that maybe the owners didn’t publicly air their troubles because they were embarrassed or ashamed of them? For God’s sake, these were bars. They sold beer. They weren’t running the public transport or the maintaining the electrical grid. The implication that they breached some sort of duty to sell beer to the community is just a bit silly, isn’t it?
I love and frequented the Prince of Wales, and if the Angel is at all a similar situation then all the information you need about its money problems was right in front of you. Simply put: people didn’t go there often enough. Let’s face it: Atlanta ain’t Boston or New York. English pubs are niche establishments in this Chili’s-clogged town, and five Derek Lawford pubs is at least two too many.
It’s a shame the POW had to be one of the places go, as it was the flagship, the most authentic of the DLP enterprises, and (as someone above mentioned) it really did evoke the pubs north of Hyde Park if you squinted your eyes a little. But that’s business, and people who actually went to the freaking place more than twice a month saw the writing on the wall. No pestering emails necessary.
Dude,
All I ask from a local business is not to be misled. At the beginning of ’08 many Decatur restaurants closed because of liquor license expirations. The Angel is the ONLY one that misled its paying customers by blaming a “backlog” of liquor licenses. In light of this, I was a little annoyed when the AJC article cited money problems, but the owner gave no further clarification.
In most cases, if a restaurant is in trouble, they may be “ashamed”, but usually aren’t completely unwilling to talk about their struggling business. If nothing else, its done in the hope that paying customers will come to their aid. From the start, The Angel acted like it had something to hide.
That’s all this post was meant to point out. Don’t lie to your customers. I certainly don’t lie to my neighbors. Neither is good for our yuppie lib community.
P.S. The Angel didn’t close because there are too many Chili’s. Chains may be the reason in other parts of metro Atlanta, but Decatur barely supports a single Ruby Tuesday’s and is violently loyal to independents.
I am a little late but it makes me smile that they have fallen on hard times.
As I previous employee who has moved on to bigger and better things I can tell you first hand that they treat there staff horribly. I have many stories but the one that stands out is when managment added money to the draw after an employee counted it then questioned him about the amount in an attempt to frame them for stealing.
Shadey people who could care less about you or there staff.
By the way there not english altough they make a sad attempt to speak with an accent.
You know…I used to complain about DLP’s, and then I realized that their Pints were actual sized pints. Around 4 plus ounces of beer per…
Then I stopped complaining in my head….
No one talks in there now….
That they are closed.
Jonny, regardless of the timeliness of your post…its great to have some confirmation of suspicions I had about that place while it was open.
Hope you’ve found a better gig!