The curse of the Chateau

Looking to carry on a family legacy in the food business, Quang Tran came across a Craigslist ad for restaurant space. Excitement prevailed over the inkling to check its rental history.
“I think if I were smarter at the time, I would’ve paid more attention to that,” he said.
KimBinh Vietnamese Restaurant has been on the ground level of the Chateau Student Housing Cooperative since May — a space that has seen at least six ownership changes in the past 16 years — and things aren’t going as well as he’d hoped.
Tran attributes the poor business partially to the restaurant’s location, as it’s on a slow corner, it’s raised from the sidewalk and it carries a negative stigma from the businesses that have come and gone.
“If we were on Washington [Avenue], all the street traffic would do the marketing for you,” he said. “We’ve found being in a slower corner and also being elevated kind of makes it more consumer un-friendly.”
Greg Pillsbury, owner of Burrito Loco, said he had similar issues when he moved in across the street five years ago.
“No one really finds their way here,” he said. “We have to go out and find them.”
To make up for the location, Pillsbury and his employees distribute coupons every weekday at office buildings in St. Anthony Main, St. Paul and downtown.
“People like us, we have to create our own business, our own customers,” he said.
Although it’s a bit off the beaten path, Dinkytown as a whole is a prominent area with a lot of people, Pillsbury said.
Tran says he has spent a great deal of time and money putting ads in City Pages, the U-Guide, coupon books and distributing discount flyers around the neighborhood.
“We have to try to give them a reason to come here and try it,” he said.
It’s come as a surprise to Tran that only about 10 percent of his customers are Chateau residents.
Given the building’s large Asian population, Tran said he expected to have a stronger following from residents. The flavors in Vietnamese food are similar to that of Chinese and Korean food, he said.
“There’s a little familiarity to it,” he said.
Graduate student and Chateau resident I-Lin Ma said she’s never eaten at KimBinh because she’s not attracted to Vietnamese food — she prefers spaghetti or Chinese — and when she goes out to eat, she’d rather travel beyond her building.
“I like to try restaurants downtown or in St. Paul, instead of just under my house,” she said.
While none of the other Chateau residents she knows have eaten there, Bridget McAndrew said KimBinh’s food is delicious.
“I think a lot of people just haven’t had Vietnamese food,” the political science senior said.
Before KimBinh, the space was Asian D’Lite since January 2008. Owner Chansouda Chareundy said that although the restaurant didn’t make enough profit to stay open longer than a year, location wasn’t the reason. KimBinh is still new, she said, and most businesses don’t pick up for at least two years after they open.
“All businesses are like that,” she said. “You can’t just jump in and make plenty of money right away. You’ve got to build your own clients.”
All of the restaurants before KimBinh served Thai food, so the switch to Vietnamese may have deterred some customers, said Chareundy, whose restaurant served a mix of Thai and Chinese food.
In 1993, the space was leased out to the initial owners of Bangkok Thai Restaurant, a name which stuck despite at least three ownership swaps, said Gary Ellis, executive director of Riverton Community Housing, the company that owns the Chateau. In 2004, it became Thai Spice Restaurant, although Bangkok’s sign was never replaced, he said. In July 2007, Thai Rocky Spring moved in.
“It’s difficult when there’s inconsistency and there’s a number of switches that make it difficult for whatever clientele base you have,” Ellis said. “They keep coming and you’re closed or there’s a new owner — so it’s been a rocky period.”
Ellis said he isn’t sure exactly why each business left. While he would ask the owners how things were going, he never knew their profit numbers. He blamed two of the space’s failed business ventures on health problems. The owner of Thai Rocky Spring had an eye condition and the one before him, a knee condition, he said.
In 1989, the Viet Restaurant signed a lease to the space, marking the last time Chateau management would have to market it. From then on, each owner had to find their own replacements, as each left before their lease was up. There were so many Asian restaurants because each owner likely searched within their own network to find the next one, Ellis said.
“If you’re in the Asian restaurant business, you’ve probably got a lot of friends in that community,” he said, “so it kind of gets self-perpetuating.”
When the Chateau opened in 1972, the ground floor space held a bank that stuck around for 10 years, followed by a Schlotzsky’s Deli for several more, Ellis said.
KimBinh is Tran’s first business venture, and if things don’t work out, he’s at least got a degree to fall back on, he said.
“After putting a lot of heart and effort and sweat into this place, even if I could run a different restaurant successfully, I probably wouldn’t,” he said, adding he’d likely return to the corporate world. “Something I can have a family and a normal life with. It’s tough. You really are married to the restaurant.”