08/19/2022
After months of consideration we have decided that we will consolidate our two locations and close our storefront on Sunshine Street on Friday, September 16, 2022
This was not an easy decision for us to make, but we have come to realize that we are a labor-heavy concept with a lot of moving parts and operating two locations in Springfield was always based on a pre-Covid world. The past three years have been incredibly challenging and we are so proud of our staff for the way they have constantly adapted and maintained positive attitudes throughout it all. However, due to continued challenges including labor shortages, rising food costs, and supply chain issues, as well as the mental and emotional toll that working in the customer service industry throughout Covid has caused, we have decided it is in our best interest to close our Sunshine Street location and consolidate our staff and resources back into our Independence Street location. Our goal is to grow up rather than out, and to refocus on doing what we know works. Our desire has always been to provide wholesome food and a welcoming atmosphere to our customers, but being stretched thin for the past few years has made achieving this goal more difficult than normal. Additionally, our commitment to take care of our staff has become increasingly hard to do in this tight labor market, and it is no longer worth it to us to operate two locations if it means we burn our staff out in the process.
Our world post-Covid is not the same as it was in 2019 when we excitedly opened the doors to our second location on Sunshine Street, a mere ten months before the pandemic began. Since the pandemic, customers have begun to interact differently with restaurant brands and trends. We would be remiss not to adapt and grow with the current times. We are excited for the next steps in our Neighbor’s Mill Springfield story. Closing this location is bittersweet as we have come to grow and love our little storefront on Sunshine Street. We’ve had the opportunity to get to know new customers and serve a different area of town. We’ve also had some tremendous staff who have supported us along the way and we will always remain grateful to them for their hard work and dedication to that store. (All of our Sunshine St. staff will remain with us at our Independence St. location should they choose!) We will miss seeing our regular’s smiling faces each day, but hope that we can continue to serve you just a few miles down the road. We encourage our customers and the larger Springfield community to see this closure as a sign of growth and forward movement, because we certainly do. One of the best lessons on business that we’ve learned over time is to “fail fast, fail forward,” and while we don’t consider this closure a failure, we do want to recognize when something is not the best that it could be and quickly make changes so that we can move forward for the better for everyone.
Thank you to those who have supported our Sunshine Street location for the past 3 1/2 years. We are grateful to you. We are grateful for the opportunity to still be standing post-Covid when we know so many restaurants and small businesses who are not. So, this is not a goodbye, but rather a “see you later on Independence Street.”
We will post more updates about our final few weeks on Sunshine Street in the coming days. Stay tuned to this page for more info.
With love and gratitude,
Clif and Lauren Brown and the entire Neighbor’s Mill team
