Table for none

Restaurants reeling as storms, economy keep patrons home

The difference between Saturday and Tuesday night has blurred at some restaurants, like Icarus, as fewer patrons are dining out in a down economy.

Suddenly chefs want to shake your hand. Waiters ply you with coupons for $10 off your next meal: Come back soon. Please. Bring friends.

Boston restaurants are struggling in this economy, and recent snowstorms - which have cut into all-important weekend business - have only made matters worse. Establishments that were already operating on thin margins now find themselves in real trouble; some teeter on the edge of closing.

"Restaurant business has slowed down dramatically," said Pat Moscaritolo, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, which cosponsors the city's biannual Restaurant Week promotion. "Nationally, it's trending anywhere from 20 to 40 percent down, and Boston is unfortunately following that trend line. People get nervous about their jobs when they hear about layoffs, store closings, and cutbacks. They get nervous about going out."

That's true of Samantha Lentz, 36, who was shopping for groceries at Whole Foods in Cambridge on a recent evening. She and her husband, who works in sales and marketing, are relocating to Boston from Colorado. "We tend to cook more," she said. "We used to eat out twice a week. Now it's once every two weeks."

The past few months have been challenging for Steve DiFillippo, owner of Davio's in Park Square, Foxborough, and Philadelphia; and Avila in the Theatre District. "The stock market is killing me," he said. "When stocks go down, what are you going to do, go out to dinner? 'Gee, honey, we just lost 10 percent. Let's go drink at Davio's!' "

Companies are cutting back, too. Corporate holiday celebrations, usually lucrative for restaurants, were less extravagant last year. Some were canceled altogether. "More than any side, we've seen the slowdown on the corporate entertaining side," Moscaritolo said. Industry forecasts predict hotel business in Boston and Cambridge will be down 10 percent in 2009. "This means business travelers aren't staying in hotels. If they're not in hotels, they're not out eating in our restaurants or shopping on Newbury Street."

Chris Douglass owns Icarus, an upscale restaurant in the South End, as well as the less expensive Ashmont Grill and Tavolo in Dorchester. Business travel once accounted for most of Icarus's weeknight customers, he said. "Now we're not seeing much of that at all."

This month, after more than 30 years in business, Douglass put Icarus on the market. If the right offer doesn't come in, he hopes to retool the restaurant's concept, making it more casual and less expensive.

"We're just barely holding our head above water, and I see the writing on the wall," he said. "I'm trying to be proactive and make a change before I'm not able to. People are still going out - they're going to the Grill, certainly - but they're really not going out to Icarus these days."

Nor to quite a few other restaurants, apparently. Circle opened in the South End in October and closed right after Thanksgiving. Croma on Newbury Street is for sale. New owners bought Duxbury's Sun Tavern in September 2007; they shut down last month. (New restaurants, however, continue to open - recently, Bond in the Financial District and Sensing on Battery Wharf, for example.)

Listings with the real estate firm Atlantic Restaurant Group Inc. are up about 30 percent from last year, broker Daniel Newcomb said. "In the last four or five days, we've had another 15 phone calls from people looking to sell their business," everything from little pizzerias to national chains, he said. "One fine-dining operator on the South Shore, between pre-Christmas and New Year's Eve with the snow, his sales were off $40,000 from the previous year."

Still, restaurants with more modest price points, geared toward social rather than corporate dining, and with loyal neighborhood customer bases can thrive.

"We're packed on a Tuesday; we're packed at 6:15," said John Kessen, co-owner of Hungry Mother in Cambridge. "Sometimes on a Sunday or a Wednesday, we're turning people away." The restaurant's main courses run from $18 to $27. "We wanted to design a menu where people could come back a couple of times a month. Given the turn in the economy, that's held to be more advantageous."

Hungry Mother's location near the Kendall Square Cinema doesn't hurt. Diners who arrive before 6 p.m. can purchase discounted movie tickets for $6 through the restaurant; a staffer will pick the tickets up and deliver them to the table. "It's driven a lot of early traffic," Kessen said. "Everyone wants 7:30. We only have about 60 seats, so it's that much more important."

This is one of the many promotions restaurants are offering to lure customers: half-price bottles of wine on Monday nights at Stella in the South End; cooking demonstrations at Dante in Cambridge; small-plate menus at Mistral in the Back Bay; and specially priced three-course prix fixe menus at just about every place in town. Every week is starting to look like Restaurant Week. And Restaurant Week itself approaches, beginning March 15. In the works: less expensive two-course lunch deals for $15.09 in addition to the usual $20.09 three-course lunches, and the likely inclusion of Saturdays, in the past a blackout date.

"Someone said to me, 'Can we make it Restaurant Year?' " Moscaritolo said with a laugh.

But a warmer future beckons. "One thing we know, the snow will end eventually," DiFillippo said. "You're going to see a lot of restaurants hunker down and get stronger. There's competition, and the economy like this is going to make us better. If you can survive it."

The next big event for restaurants to pin their hopes on is Valentine's Day, which falls on a Saturday, already a busy night. "Saturday is the worst day," Newcomb said. "You want it to be a Monday, a Thursday." But there is good news: St. Patrick's Day is on a Tuesday this year.

Devra First can be reached at dfirst@globe.com.