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Kayotea closing in January
Kayotea Tea Room & Bistro, which opened downtown on Broadway in 2006, will close in mid-January when the lease at expires, owner Kellye Dubinski said.
The restaurant has been struggling during the economic downturn, and Dubinski said that now that she has a family and a baby to take care of, she doesn’t have the time she needs to dedicate to keep the business profitable.
“Times are tough for downtown businesses right now,” she said. “Everybody is having problems. It’s frustrating business owners. We’ve trimmed all the fat and still….”
Dubinski, a graduate of Hickman High School and the University of Missouri, plans to go back to what she was doing before she opened Kayotea: selling bulk tea. The Merle Norman cosmetics store across the street has agreed to give her shelf space, she said.
Dubinski was inspired to open Kayotea after frequenting a tearoom in Chicago where she was working in 2004. But with the drop in retail traffic downtown and declining sales at Kayotea, Dubinski said she could no longer afford to pay $3,000 per month rent at 912 E. Broadway, an historic building renovated by owner John Ott. “My overhead at this location is very large,” she said of the 2,600-square-foot space. “We struggle every day to keep the doors open. The pressure I’m under now is just insane.”
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