Froggie's Cafe to close this week after drop in business

After more than 20 years in San Luis Obispo, Froggie's Café in the Marigold Shopping Center has closed its doors because of a continued decrease in business, the owner said.

Though a sign on the door on Wednesday said it was closed temporarily for the holidays, owner Beverly Pratt confirmed that the café has permanently shuttered as of Friday.

“It is just not up with the times,” Pratt said of the business, which was one of the last frozen yogurt shops left in the county to not be self-serve. “We are deeply sad, and it was not an easy decision to make.”

The 1,250-square-foot-café — a fixture in the shopping center off Broad Street since the center opened in 1997 — has had several owners.

Pratt and her sister, Susan Pratt, took over from Avila Valley Barn owner Sally DeVincenzo in 2010. At the time, sales were declining, Pratt said, and she hoped to restore them by focusing more on the café’s food wrap and coffee offerings.

Though they saw an increase in customers and sales for the first four years of ownership, this year the shop saw “a continued decrease in business” and failed to draw enough customers during its peak summer months to stay open, Pratt said. She declined to disclose revenue, but said the cafe has been drawing less than half the 200 or more customers it saw during its height.

Combined with increases in minimum wage and the possibility of a San Luis Obispo city Styrofoam ban — a product that the store uses a lot of — the Pratts decided it was time to close the business permanently before its lease expires in March.

“We tried our best,” Pratt said. “We purchased an ailing business because we knew it was a San Luis Obispo staple, and we tried our best for the past five years to bring it back to life, but we just couldn’t make it happen.”

Pratt said she and her sister decided to close rather than sell the business, because she felt it was not a “good, viable product.” Instead, they are now selling off the store’s appliances and preparing to focus on their other family businesses, including construction business West Coast Construction Co. in San Luis Obispo.

All of the store’s 13 part-time employees were notified in early December of the impending closure. Pratt said she wanted to keep the closure quiet publicly and not have “a long, drawn-out goodbye.”

This story was originally published December 25, 2014 at 10:35 PM with the headline "Froggie's Cafe to close this week after drop in business."