Owner of Pauline's Cafe talks about what led to South Burlington restaurant's closure

David Hoene said he has been “distraught” since closing his long-running South Burlington restaurant, Pauline’s Café, abruptly last month.

“It’s difficult for your staff, extremely difficult to manage and it’s difficult for the people you’re doing business with, and it’s difficult for the customer base. There’s not a goodbye, farewell tour,” according to Hoene, who assumed ownership of the 47-year-old café in 2007.

“It’s traumatic to say the least, and super-difficult because you don’t get the closure with the customers, people who supported you,” Hoene said. “You’ve been part of their families almost.”

Problems that set in with the COVID-19 pandemic persisted through a variety of grants and loans, worker shortages, ebbs and flows with takeout and seated dining and rising prices for goods and services. Hoene said the bottom line dictated Pauline’s end by the time Hoene served his last regular customers March 17.

“Looking at the numbers just in an unemotional way, it just seemed unsustainable to me to reinvest,” Hoene said. “I didn’t know if I had it in me to do it.”

Never rebounded from COVID

The beginning of the end for Pauline’s came in 2020.

“The story really for me is that we hadn’t rebounded completely from the COVID times,” Hoene said. He thinks he may have reopened Pauline’s too soon after the COVID shutdowns in 2020, and that the takeout model didn’t completely work for a traditional, sit-down, French-inspired restaurant such as his.

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Hoene said he tried to keep lunch, brunch and dinner going while continuing to do a large number of takeout meals. Takeout, however, interfered with his staff’s ability to service sit-down customers – diners were complaining about long wait times for meals, and Hoene said service is a big deal for a traditional restaurant such as Pauline’s – so he cut back significantly on food to go, which put a drag on business.

Pauline’s cut back to dinner-only for a time, then returned to its fuller schedule.

“We tried to open up lunches again and brunches two or three times and we just didn’t get enough customers coming through the doors,” Hoene said. He cut all but dinners again because since 2022 he had been working every line shift while trying to manage finances and deal with deferred building maintenance, rebuilding the workforce and making equipment purchases.

“It just got overwhelming for me, to tell you the truth,” Hoene said.

Wet Vermont summer hurt business

COVID-related staffing shortages continued into 2023, as Hoene said potential workers realized during the pandemic that they wanted more time off, more family time and a better work/life balance. The wet summer last year hurt business further.

“We had a very slow summer all over Vermont, I think, because of the rain,” Hoene said.

He said he received good advice from brokers and financial analysts about a business plan that included potentially selling the restaurant within the next couple of years. He said he was too busy dealing with the present to devote as much energy to the future as he should have.

“I just kind of couldn’t make the decision at the right time,” Hoene said.

The trend is moving away from traditional, sit-down restaurants; Hoene compared running one to piloting a ship: When it’s full steam ahead, the ship is cruising. “When you have to pivot in tight situations it’s very difficult,” he said. “I didn’t pivot fast enough. It’s sort of hard for a dinosaur like me to pivot.”

With Pauline’s closed, Hoene is taking time to reflect on what his 20-plus years there have meant.

“I really have a lot of gratitude for the time I have spent here,” he said, adding that his gratitude extends especially to the staff and customers. He said he is grateful for the support of his family, noting that son Andreas has been “the rock in the kitchen” for years.

Hoene said he is also dealing with the “angst and trauma” of closing the restaurant he began working at in 2001. Building owner (and former Pauline’s owner) Robert Fuller is looking to sell the building, as Seven Days reported.

“It’s a beautiful spot,” Hoene said of the building along U.S. 7 near the Shelburne town line, “and the right team of people could do something fantastic there.”

Hoene would still like to work in the restaurant industry. He has trained a lot of cooks, he said, and believes he has knowledge to share.

“I see myself as a creative chef,” Hoene said. “I’d really like to be able to continue with that in some fashion with the creativity and the mentoring/training of people.” He’d like to deal with the cooking and the people more than the business side of things.

“For me,” he said, “it’s more of a physical, visceral joy you get as a chef.”

The knowledge he would bring from his years of experience, Hoene said, would include the bad with the good. He said he could certainly help with troubleshooting.

“I made all the errors,” Hoene said.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.