More On "High Rents"
 

I keep hearing that any restaurant in The Villages that fails is the fault of "high rent". High as compared to what?
I also hear they must give a % back to the developer. This is not unusual.
If I decide to open a restaurant in a particular location I first do some serious research. Rent, location, traffic, competition, customer base, golf cart accessible, parking, etc. Once I have satisfied myself it will work I provide price, quality, service, ambiance, cleanliness etc. Of all of the things I need to consider the rent is a known factor. No guess work here. Either I can support it or not.
If I make all of the right decisions and the local economy doesn't tank, I have a shot at success. If I don't make it I can not blame "high rent". I can not blame it on someone else's "greed". All of the blame is mine.

Another example of someone speaking without the facts. :blahblahblah:

The rent for commercial properties in The Villages is very fair compared to like properties elsewhere in the country. Percent of sales is a VERY common occurrence in a commercial lease.

Businesses know the rent going in. It is usually poor management, poor product, poor service or a combination of the above.

What Is Happening at Urban Flats?
 

I have been to Urban Flats on several occasions and decided to take my wife and one of her friends there on Saturday for lunch. My first shock was that the place was empty - virtually deserted. If you know UF, you know that there is a bar section, a center section and then one to the right. Throughout lunch there was no-one in the bar area, two tables occupied in the center section and we were the only table in use in the right section. There were three or four parties seated outside. My second shock was the menus. All the menus given to us were in truly sad shape - wrinkled and stained. Mine had a number of small sections torn out of the side. This appears to be a restaurant with a serious cash-flow situation.

I must say that the service was excellent and the food and beverages good. The ambience was quite nice if you could ignore sitting in a 'ghost town' atmosphere. We were there for what have been luncheon peak - shortly after noon until shortly after 1 PM. I truly hope this was an aberration , but strongly suspect it was not. Our continued economic decline will hit good establishments as well as marginal ones. Appears to correlate with the fact that Ruth's Cris is having problems, while McDonalds is reporting record profits.

KathieI, I certainly hope you are right. Urban Flats has an entirely different set of offerings from any of the other restaurants in TV. We need variety. The appearance of the menu's did concern me. I hope this is just an isolated oversight on the part of management and that we continue to be able to enjoy UF.

I also concur with Kathie, UF is mainly a night place. When we have been down, the place is always packed and rocking!

Army Guy

Just went to UF for a late lunch and ate outside. You are right, the menus are pretty beat, but the food was great, and the prices reasonable. Will be back soon!:icon_hungry:

Crappy menus are a definite turnoff. If any regulars are listening they might want to talk to the managers or owners of UF.

We went to Urban Flats last Tuesday. Had a couple of drinks at the outside bar with Bob the bartender. We then went inside for dinner about 4:30 pm. We were the only two in the dining room and the 3 waitresses all argued about being off the clock and on the clock finallly 1 waitress agreed to start work 5 minutes early. The food was great and we had a 2 for 1 coupon out of the clipper magazine.