HAMPTON ROADS, Va. — After 114 years and 25 years, respectively, Norfolk's French Bakery and Portsmouth's Roger Brown's are the latest local restaurants to announce that they're shutting down.
Both made the announcement this week.
On Wednesday, auctioned off equipment from inside French Bakery & Deli in the Riverview neighborhood was seen being taken out by the highest bidder.
The businesses closed for different reasons: French Bakery owner George Habib told News 3 in 2020 he had no one to hand the business to. Roger Brown's owner Curtis Lyons told News 3 this week that challenges including tunnel tolls, the COVID-19 pandemic and competition from Rivers Casino all led to the final decision.
These follow other high-profile closures in the last several months, including Hampton's Mango Mangeaux, 456 Fish in Downtown Norfolk and Rockafeller's in Virginia Beach.
"I would say it's been very slow for the whole entire year, and it's been impacted significantly by economics. We're still struggling with getting employees," Martha Davenport, Executive Director of the Virginia Beach Restaurant Association, told News 3 in January. "This would be the way that I would put it. If you're a local and love your restaurant, you need continue to show it love."
Wednesday, she told News 3 that the organization lost ten percent of its membership to closure in 2025.
"It gives us pause. You want to see what went wrong or what happened," said Stella Pomianek, owner of Norfolk's Cafe Stella in Ghent.
She and her husband, Mariusz, have spent the last 15 years growing their customer base.
"We have grown and our community has grown larger and we're just so thankful. We never take it for granted," she told News 3.
But Pomianek also admits she faces the same struggles many businesses do, including higher costs, difficulties hiring. Other issues she believes are more coffee shop-centric, like people taking up tables and not ordering anything.
"There definitely have been misunderstandings about policy and it becomes online backlash," said Pomianek. "We have a very loyal customer base and we just keep on doing what we do."
Loyalty. It can keep a business afloat, even during challenging times like those businesses are facing now.
