Three National Chains including It's A Grind (shown here) refused to force out the single owner Bagel Bistro in Southern California
By Allen Bacon
Editor
Bosco: The Blog
Something that many thought would never happen, occured recently in Fullerton, CA. The landlords of a strip mall in an affluent section of the city tried to push out a long time "mom and pop" coffee shop to entice a national brand coffee shop to take over. But all three national brand coffee companies turned down the offer allowing the local shop to continue.
The result was a backlash from the community spurred on my the local community newspaper, The Fullerton Observer.
Muy Kung and Linda Chhan, owners of the Bagel Bistro were originally refused a lease renewal from Regency Centers Inc. a few years ago despite verbal promises by the center's longtime manager. At that time the Regency had invited Coffee Bean and then Starbucks to take over the choice corner location that Kung's and Chhan's coffee shop and banished the Bistro to a small spot at the end of the shopping center....A place that was very hard to get to and see from the street.
Customers drew up a petition which was singed in days by over 1200 in protest of the forced move. After hearing the Bistro's story, to their credit, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Starbucks, and It's A Grind all refused to sign on.
The new regional management at Regency reviewed the lease situation and offered a reasonable increase to stay at their longtime corner location.
Many times you hear the flip side with the ugly stories on how the big chains push out the small operators. A case in point was the time when Starbucks tried to push out my friends Alan and Kelly Jeffrey's coffee shops, Miss Kelly's, in Orange, CA. This was met with stiff opposition by their customer base who in turn signed a petition to not allow the Seattle company to take over their operation. In the case of the Bagel Bistro however, these three companies exhibited a conscience and did the right thing.
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