Reader Rob P. has requested I post some restaurants stats. I think I have posted the answer to both these questions in the past so I will take a look. If you have any suggestions please post them here.
Hi John,
First let me thank you (and your staff) I would hope you have some help with your weekly column – for all you do for our community keeping us updated with all the food-drink comings and goings all these years. It’s the first thing I read when I open the pages of the SB Independent. But I have a job for you and it may require some in depth research:
1) All these years you have been a wealth of information on food and drink establishments in our communities. I think it would be great to know what known location(s) in the South Coast communities have had the largest or highest “turnovers” of restaurants in a single location?
2) And what is to the best source of info doing your research of being our Restaurant Guy, the longest known single location a business been open as a food and/or drink business?
Just some to think about. Once again, John …. Thank you for your years of service to our communities here in the South Coast in Santa Barbara County.
Rob P.
The most turned over is probably in IV
The longest food & drink restaurant in SB might be the El Paseo restaurant, built around 1922.
I believe Dutch Gardens is possibly around the same time.
Aka: The Poppy Cafe when it first opened.
The first one that comes to mind as a contender for most turnover is the one on lower State that used to be Johnny’s Ribs and has since been Mama Donna, Billie’s, Pace, The Mex Authentic, Taza, Onus Donuts, and some other places I’d have to think more to remember.
Heh, just for fun I checked this by downloading the closed-restaurants archive from the site and running some stats.
The most-turned-over location is indeed what I thought: 413 State, which has 9 listings. (This is excluding multi-tenant addresses like the SB Public Market.) Of course, this only counts locations in existence since the inception of this guide, and my analysis was quick and dirty so wouldn’t catch things like slightly different spelling/formatting of addresses.