Morro Bay restaurant is switching owners after a decade — but the name is sticking around
Those who regularly eat at Blue Sky Bistro in Morro Bay won’t be seeing owners Denise Robson and Alan Harrison running the restaurant much longer.
The pair will soon be customers, just like them.
Robson confirmed that she and Harrison have sold the business, located at 699 Embarcadero in Morro Bay, to new owner Roger Sharp.
The deal will officially go through on Oct. 6.
“It makes me sad,” Robson told The Tribune. “It’s a really hard time for me to say goodbye and give it all up. But yeah, there’s a new chapter coming.”
A sign in the window of the Morro Bay restaurant announcing the change in ownership listed Slappy’s Chowder House as the new owner.
Slappy’s was incorporated in August, and Sharp is listed as its primary agent.
Sharp has his hand in a number of other restaurants around the Central Coast, including Big Bubba’s Bad BBQ in Paso Robles and Tortilla Town, which has locations in Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo.
Robson said Sharp, who has 25 years of experience in the restaurant business, has big plans for Blue Sky Bistro and making it more efficient.
Sharp also plans to keep the name for the near future, she said, though he could change it down the road.
Robson and Harrison bought Blue Sky Bistro in 2010.
At the time, they’d never before owned a restaurant, so they spent the last decade learning the ins and outs of the industry. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“Let’s call it challenging and exhausting,” Robson said. “It was a scary thing at first because you know, we had to put everybody on leave and pay sick pay and purchase COVID-required equipment and supplies with money we didn’t have. We had to go into our retirement to pull money out to cover us through that horrible time until the (Paycheck Protection Program) came.”
She remembers “seeing businesses close for good and not knowing what the future had in store.”
“It was a fight-or-flight situation and we just kept moving forward,” Robson recalled.
Even as pandemic restrictions lessened, Robson said running Blue Sky Bistro was still an uphill battle.
Keeping staff during the national worker shortage was difficult, and finding the best ways to continue to serve the restaurant’s customers quality food took a lot of trial and error, she said.
“It created a big psychological challenge,” Robson said. “ You’ve got to be really clear and constantly be on the lookout for every little detail.”
Now, however, Robson will have a little time to sit back and relax.
She said she plans to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Southern California to British Columbia, Canada, before coming back and enjoying life in Morro Bay.
“Our staff is like our little family, and that’s one thing we’re gonna miss the most,” she said. “But we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to still come back. We’re going to be patrons of the restaurants in the future. ... Now we get to sit down and enjoy what everybody else gets to enjoy when they go there.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
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