by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
Open for just over two months, Mudville Grille’s management says downtown business has been slow, but steady.
“If you asked me to consider our progress on a larger scale, I would say we’re pretty pleased,” said co-owner Mike Meehan. “We’re not complaining, but there are some areas where we’d like to see some improvements.”
Meehan said weekday lunch business has been, “very strong,” but that happy hour and dinner interests have, so far, been sparse to moderate.
“We open our doors at 11 a.m. and we stay pretty full until after 1:30 in the afternoon,” he said. “Lunch is solid and our business after hours is getting better, but we expected a little more.
“Right now we’re focusing on getting our name out there, basically promoting ourselves the best that we can so that we can continue to improve and ultimately be at a level we’re more comfortable with.”
A large part of promoting Mudville downtown, said Meehan, centers around attaching the restaurant’s name to various events in the area.
“We have to because we realize that some people still don’t know we’re down here,” he said. “We’re looking at things like the (First Wednesday) Art Walk because they have a built-in following and people seem very interested in it.”
Meehan said Mudville will become a stop on the monthly attraction by November.
“We’re also trying to develop different specials that will draw more people in,” he said. “We’re doing things like $2 cocktails and a trivia night on Wednesdays because our downtown store caters to a much different crowd than we’re used to.”
Mudville’s other locations in St. Nicholas and Arlington appeal to families and high school students. Meehan said the downtown crowd is mostly “younger professionals.”
“Business class is an entirely different game,” he said. “When the work day is over, people want to go home. We understand that, but as downtown continues to bring in more residential units we think things will improve.”
Meehan said except for a handful of regulars from the W.A. Knight Building across the street, the residential draw right now remains less than overwhelming.
“I’m sure that will change. More and more things are coming downtown, residential included, and we can only stand to benefit from that,” he said. “Just down the street more housing is about to become available and that’s going to be very helpful to all of the businesses here.”
But until things change, Meehan said later and weekend hours will be off the menu.
“We’ve talked about it, but until we have more feedback we’ll keep things the way they are right now,” he said. “Eventually we’ll expand. We’re confident we will.”