'Shocking and surprising': Beloved Naples breakfast and lunch cafe to close May 28

Poached, the mom-and-pop daytime café owned by husband/wife Kenneth Vandereecken and Brandi Lostracco at Galleria Shoppes at Vanderbilt since 2011, will close its doors May 28 and not by choice.

“I thank all the people who have supported us, and I hope that people who come into this space appreciate everyone as much as we do,” Lostracco said.

“We spent all this time developing relationships with everyone in the community: the schools, the firefighters, the police. We consider ourselves wholly a part of this community, and to be told and shown that all of that can be pushed aside is shocking and surprising.”

When the couple was within six months of their lease expiring, Vandereecken emailed and texted the Galleria Shoppes at Vanderbilt’s management company, asking to see terms of the lease extension because “for a business, you need the ability to budget everything far in advance and to plan for your future.”

“At the beginning of the year, we were trying to get our lease extension; it's in our lease that we get a five-year extension as an option.”

'Absolutely ridiculous' runaround

Galleria's leasing broker could not be reached for comment.

Lostracco describes getting the runaround, receiving replies saying the owners are on vacation and they'll be back in two weeks.

Two weeks later and “for months on end,” Vandereecken tried reaching out again and was told the owners were still on vacation and wouldn't be back for another two weeks.

She called it as “absolutely ridiculous, happening over and over” after more than six queries.

Soon after, they received an email saying that to view the extension agreement, they would need to stay open until 7 p.m. every day and remove some outside tables.

Those tables, she said, had been there 13 years and hadn't been a problem until now. Removing them wasn’t a huge issue.

The bigger problem was complying with the 7 p.m. closing requirement.

“Being open until 7 p.m. as a breakfast-lunch restaurant is pretty insane. We would have to hire an entire staff, create a new menu and double our inventory on everything.”

It wasn’t an option for the couple, so with permission from the leasing company, they looked for a buyer with nighttime dining experience.

“That way, our staff, who have been with us forever, would still be protected, and we would still be there.”

They found a buyer fairly quickly with Jamie Stalowski who owns La Fontanella in Bonita Springs and Fort Myers, and Blanc in Fort Myers.

For Stalowski, Poached’s appeal was that “it’s a fantastic business. We have a lot going on in the evenings and wanted to get into the breakfast industry. Their hours of operation don't coincide with ours, so that was the first thing.”

The other?

Poached’s Bonita Springs location “is literally on the other side of La Fontanella’s wall. So, as far as expanding our restaurant group, it was a solid business decision.”

The management company’s leasing department accepted the ownership transfer and approved Stalowski's lease application via a Jan. 25 email. However, it requested to see the menu changes so they wouldn’t conflict with other “exclusivities” in the center.

While he was flexible about changing Poached’s name and style if necessary, he consistently asked the leasing team if breakfast service would be allowed to continue.

“I didn't want to lose that goodwill of those customers.”

A week later, the management company informed Stalowski that approval was not progressing and told him he could take his chances when the vacated space came to market.

Stalowski was “stumped” because he already had the approval letter via email.

“I asked them was it that they didn’t want Poached there? They didn't say one way or another.”

He also said he wasn't offered a chance to negotiate a price per square foot.

“They didn't know what I was willing to pay or if I was willing to double their square footage price. They had no idea because we didn't even get to that point,” Stalowski said.

What's next?

With no restaurant to call their own anymore, Lostracco has no idea.

They had sold their Pebblebrooke Plaza location because staffing three locations post-pandemic was problematic. That space is now Yolk Café, and she said that it’s still doing well with the same staff.

The couple is “reeling from this and our focus is ensuring all our staff get jobs in the area. It's a terrible time of year to call in favors to friends in the hospitality business because they're usually cutting people loose.”

She described her team as "wonderful assets to the community."

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Poached remains open daily for breakfast and lunch in Naples from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. until May 28. The Bonita Springs location under Stalowski’s ownership has the same menu and daily hours.

Food and restaurant writer Diana Biederman was a fan of Poached's pancakes. The restaurant was the setting for our feature team's first in-person meeting post-Hurricane Ian.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Naples breakfast, lunch cafe Poached is closing