Lincoln Kitchen shuts its doors; ingredients for a successful business debated

Lincoln Kitchen shortly before its opening in early 2017.

Just 15 months after it opened, Lincoln Kitchen shut its doors last week, leaving Lincoln once again without a restaurant.

Asked why it closed, co-owner and Lincoln resident Jim White said simply, “It didn’t work. Perhaps I should have known better, because there were plenty of people who turned down an opportunity to put a restaurant in that space. The difficulty with it, now that I know a little bit more, is there is just isn’t enough population density and the location is out of the way. Maybe we’re wrong and didn’t know what we’re doing… I live in town and I’d love to see something succeed there.”

Lincoln Kitchen opened in February 2017, nine months after the closure of AKA Bistro. In summer 2016, White and his daughter, co-owner Elizabeth Akehurst-Moore, signed leases for that building as well as the former Whistle Stop Cafe property nearby. Trail’s End Cafe opened in the latter location in October 2016 but closed in February 2018. White said he was negotiating a termination agreement on the Lincoln Kitchen lease with the Rural Land Foundation, which owns both properties.

In 2016, Lincoln resident Richard Card made an offer for the AKA Bistro space, but the RLF went with White instead. Card had proposed a business called Blazes, a combination bookstore, restaurant, coffee shop, and cocktail bar that would also host music performances (a website for the proposal is still live).

Card said this week that he planned to reach out again to the RLF but was also seriously considering a different site in town that he declined to specify. The biggest issue with that site is the septic system, he said.

“I was disappointed in the first [AKA Bistro] situation and I don’t want to lead people on when we’re not far enough down the line to have any kind of concrete commitment,” Card said. “I thought we had a situation with the RLF and it didn’t work out, which was disappointing to me and a lot of other people. One of the reasons given to me was that they went with Lincoln Kitchen  because they had a track record and [the RLF] couldn’t afford failure. Potential restaurateurs are going to think twice about going in there, as am I.”

If Blazes does open somewhere in Lincoln, Card hopes that a more “community-based” business with events like music and poetry readings will draw enough customers to succeed. “The idea is to spark a conversation, not just go in and out,” he said. “It’s a struggle because it’s a small community, but it’s not just commercial—it’s who we are to each other.”

In the wake of Lincoln Kitchen’s closing, numerous ideas for the site have been floated on LincolnTalk, but White warned that even a small food-related business must comply with Board of Health regulations, including licensed servers. “It’s not as easy to set up as some people might think it is,” he said.

The bigger obstacle, he added, was “people wanting to see a viable commercial district conflicting with why we all moved to Lincoln in the first place: peace and quiet and open space.” To have staying power, any restaurant in Lincoln “is going to have to be subsidized in some way, either by the town, if that’s legal, or by a wealthy individual.”