When you build a restaurant around a comfort food popular with all age groups—like macaroni and cheese—how can it not succeed, right?
In late 2010, Bill Courtney did just that, opening Cheese-ology on the Delmar Loop, home to over a dozen varieties of the American staple. Customers would ooh and aah when staffers would appear, deftly clutching bubbling cast iron skillets in two different sizes.
However, several days ago, came the following announcement via Facebook:
According to Courtney, several factors caused the fateful decision: a lease that was up for renewal and more importantly, the price of dairy products, a huge cost percentage item for a place named Cheese-ology. “Dairy prices have doubled over the last two years,” he said. “Butter hit an all-time high in December and milk hit the same mark just before that. Since the prediction was for no easing of prices for at least a year, we decided that it would be a huge gamble and a huge risk to try to ride it out.”
It’s not that the restaurant wasn’t successful. “We’ve done quite well for the last five years,” he noted, “ but restaurants costs never goes down and I refused to compromise our product by buying cheaper raw materials.”
He added that dry pasta has gone up 10% over five years, and paper almost 30%, and those numbers were not the issue.
Price point played a role as well. “We had a value-minded menu,” he said, meaning Cheese-ology represented “a $10 lunch,” the sweet spot for that meal period. “Sure, I could have raised prices," he said, “but I was already at the max price point for what we were doing.”
Plus, Courtney (right) said he’s always been consumer-driven in his thinking and that “I know I wouldn’t be drawn here if lunch was more than $10.”
While he was happy he could leave on his own terms, the chemist by trade said he will now “look for a job in the sciences,” but when asked if he’d ever consider a Cheese-ology food truck, he said he’d considered doing just that for several years and that “I've held on to the intellectual property…so you can never rule anything out.”
Cheese-ology
6602 Delmar
314-863-6365
Hours, through March 7:
Mon-Thurs: 11 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Fri-Sat: 11a.m. - 10 p.m.
Sun: 12 p.m. - 9 p.m.
