This Sunday, 2/27 at 10pm, we’re closing the doors on our Marina location for good. It’s been a long time coming after an extremely difficult year in business. The original Kasa in the Castro was busy right out of the gate and fortunately has remained that way ever since. Kasa Castro was the first restaurant venture Anamika, Suresh, and I have ever participated in, and honestly we took its success for granted. We thought: provide delicious and unique food and good service at a reasonable price, and you’ll make a profit. And amazingly we were right!
Until we weren’t. At all. The Marina store proved us wrong and showed us exactly what everybody kept telling us–that the restaurant business is HARD and fraught with risk. And that we were lucky to have a success under our belt. Despite making some classic rookie mistakes in the Marina (the space was too big for our concept so never had that “packed” look we wanted, the color pallet was too dark for the space, no TVs despite the Marina’s sport-obsessed residents), we put everything we had into making that store busier and successful. The food reviews were really solid, repeat business was strong, but attracting enough interest and ultimately enough trial just never happened. How could two very similar restaurants with identical food yield such different results? Sometimes it felt like the stores were in two different states!
We spent the last year trying to turn things around and finally decided a few months ago to exit the location. People usually offer their condolences when we tell them we’re closing, but truthfully at this point it’s a great relief. We learned many lessons from this failure, but thankfully it didn’t bring down our entire business. Those lessons turned out to be at a great financial cost (my dad would call it tuition), but hopefully we will use our new knowledge wisely as we continue our quest to get more people eating Kasa’s kati rolls and homestyle Indian food.
On a personal note, I will miss our loyal Marina customers. You all kept praising our food and thanking us for being in the neighborhood. You made those not-quite-busy-enough, stressful evenings at the restaurant bearable for me. You know who you are, and I thank you. Please come visit me in the Castro.
As for the future, we are still planning to roll out a food truck called The Kati Roller sometime before summer. There will likely be another (much smaller) location in the works toward the end of this year as well. Although I’m not allowed to spill the beans yet, there is another operator with an exciting concept taking over our space in the Marina in the coming months.
Goodbye, Marina.
Tim
