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Diners and their dogs enjoy Taylor Gourmet Deli’s new
location and breezy space. Photo: Amanda Abrams |
The owners of Taylor Gourmet Deli weren’t planning on opening a second restaurant in Northwest DC – they had enough work on their hands with their first restaurant on H Street NE. But a can’t-refuse offer from a Mount Vernon landlord changed their mind, and it looks like their new shop is going to do just fine.
“We don’t have a penny to our pockets,” said Taylor owner David Mazza, explaining why opening another location was the last thing on his and co-owner Casey Patten’s minds. Plus, they’d just established the H Street deli in November and, despite almost immediate popularity with the public, were still working out the glitches.
But a couple of representatives of Edens and Avant, the real estate company that owns the new CityVista development at Fifth and K streets NW, began aggressively courting the duo.
“They were one of the first tenants we went after when we bought the shopping center,” said Brady Pate, a development associate at Edens and Avant. “We saw that they were exactly what we wanted for the project. They’re small but will generate traffic of a tenant twice their size.”
The company made Mazza and Patten a generous offer in tenant improvement funds – that’s the money restaurateurs pay to retrofit the kitchen, bathrooms and mechanical systems to their specifications – which the two guys couldn’t refuse. It allowed them to design the Mount Vernon restaurant with an industrial look similar to the H Street location.
After a “soft launch” party with local bloggers that helped get the word out, the restaurant opened Oct. 16. The response has already been “absolutely phenomenal,” according to Mazza, who said there’s a line out the door most weekdays. “It’s a different demographic [from H Street],” he mused. “Over there, it’s folks from the Senate or families with young kids. [In Mount Vernon] it’s very business-oriented, more about the power lunch.” |
