NOOZ: Bye bye Sur La Table

[Jenise]

https://seattle.eater.com/2020/5/6/21249482/sur-la-table-reportedly-preparing-to-file-for-bankruptcy

That would be a shame. I hope they can restructure or something. (I wonder what debt burden good ol' Investcorp brought to them when they bought in 2011.)

The cookware store near my house closed a year or two ago... entirely organically: the owner was feeling old and it was just time. I guess no one wanted it so it closed. However, in a pleasant surprise, after a month or two empty it was taken over by Whisk, a very similar business. (Of course, I'm pleased to have this kind of shop local to me.)

I took a class at Sur La Table a couple years ago... January 1 at 10am. Tough time for a class but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

[Jenise]

It is sad. The downtown Seattle store, the original, is an absolute institution. Nothing like the organized mall spaces for the newer stores, it's everything stuffed to the rafters, jammed anywhere it can fit because the space was never meant to hold as much as they've got in there. Customers can barely move around. It's wonderful.

We have a store nearby, but I confess I've only been in there a time or two. Certainly the type of store with mandated closures. And just maybe Amazon as a competitor; pricing and selection and continued delivery.

I remember choosing a gift card for my sister-in-law from Sur La Table for her birthday one year. She is a very avid cook. When she called to thank us, she told me she almost threw the gift card into the trash. It came in a special mailer with logo of store, name, etc. She thought it was an ad and said: "love the store, but I can't afford to shop there". The card was fully used.

At one point I considered one of their cooking classes. But as I got more and more into wine, developing scratch cooking skills seemed to come more naturally. Started exploring wine-food pairing online, etc. Figuring out how I can tailor recipes to slow cooker, bread machine, etc.

For gourmet cooks (and gourmands), this might be a big loss if BK results in store closures and/or complete closure.