When Flaco’s Cuban Bakery opened its second location in busy Midtown, staff expected business to continue booming.
But quiet summer months hurt both Flaco’s Midtown location and its original downtown location. Owner Sara Puyana said business has recently returned to normal.
The new branch was supposed to boost Flaco’s profits, but Puyana said the downtown location had to support the Midtown location financially during the sleepy summer.
“We definitely feel the difference,” she said of the Fall semester. “Our weekends are getting back to normal, and lunch rush is getting a lot better.”
The new branch survived with help from the original downtown location’s community base — returning customers like homeowners from the Duckpond Neighborhood area, city business owners and downtown workers.
Toward the end of the summer, Gainesville’s nightlife brought weekend business to the new location. Patronage picked up even more when Flaco’s newly created catering service started serving student organizations’ on-campus meetings.
But she said there’s still a lot of work to do.
Setbacks like broken air conditioners in both locations make operating a customer-service-based business tough.
But as the Fall semester picks up, more funds are becoming available to make fixes and improvements.
Heather Rivers, a 22-year-old environmental engineering senior, said the Midtown location is a convenient place to hang out.
“There’s always people here, especially late at night,” she said. “It’s a good place to soak up all the alcohol.”
New features to Flaco’s will include a walk-up service window with an awning to shield from rain or especially sunny skies.
Jonathan Hamilton, a UF economics professor, described a similar struggle with the Burrito Bros. Taco Co. when it opened an unsuccessful branch in Tampa. He said a branch’s success relies on the staff’s ability to keep the quality of the second location as good as the original.
“It can be tough to reproduce the same product with the same quality,” he said.
Contact Alex Catalano at acatalano@alligator.org.
Weizhi Cheng, 22, enjoys a Cuban gator sandwich during lunch with Heather Rivers, 22, at the Midtown Flaco’s Cuban Bakery on Wednesday afternoon.
