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The owner of Pauline’s Cafe discusses the closure of the South Burlington restaurant

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

“It’s hard on your workforce, it’s extremely hard to manage, it’s hard on the people you do business with, and it’s hard on the customer base. There is no farewell tour,” said Hoene, who became owner of the 47-year-old café in 2007.

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

The challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic continued through a variety of grants and loans, labor shortages, ebbs and flows with takeout and sit-down dining, and rising prices for goods and services. Hoene said the results dictated Pauline’s end by the time Hoene served his last regulars on March 17.

“When I look at the numbers in an unemotional way, it just seems unsustainable to me to reinvest,” says Hoene. “I didn’t know if I had it in me to do it.”

Never recovered from COVID

The beginning of the end for Pauline came in 2020.

“The story for me really is that we haven’t fully recovered from COVID times yet,” Hoene said. He thinks he may have reopened Pauline’s too quickly after the 2020 COVID shutdowns, and that the takeout model didn’t quite work for a traditional, sit-down, French-inspired restaurant like his.

More: ‘A bit obsessed’: Pauline’s Cafe has been mixing French influences and local ingredients for 46 years

Hoene said he was trying to keep lunch, brunch and dinner going while continuing to do a lot of takeout. However, takeout hampered his staff’s ability to serve seated customers — diners complained about long wait times for meals, and Hoene said service is a big problem for a traditional restaurant like Pauline’s — so he cut back significantly on food to go, which put a brake on business.

Pauline went back to dinner only for a while and then returned to her fuller schedule.

“We tried to reopen lunches and brunches two or three times, but there just weren’t enough customers coming in,” Hoene said. He canceled everything but the dinners, having worked every line shift since 2022 while trying to manage finances and address deferred building maintenance, rebuild the workforce and purchase equipment.

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

Vermont’s wet summer hurt business

The COVID-related workforce shortage continued into 2023, when Hoene said potential employees realized during the pandemic they wanted more free time, more family time and a better work-life balance. Last year’s wet summer caused even more damage to the business community.

“We’ve had a very slow summer across Vermont, I think, because of the rain,” Hoene said.

He said he had received good advice from real estate agents and financial analysts on a business plan that included the possible sale of the restaurant within a few years. He said he was too busy with the present to devote as much energy to the future as he should.

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

The trend is a departure from traditional, sit-down restaurants; Hoene compared steering a ship to steering a ship: when the ship is at full speed, the ship is sailing. “When you have to turn in tight situations, it’s very difficult,” he said. “I wasn’t turning fast enough. It’s difficult for a dinosaur like me to turn.”

Now that Pauline’s is closed, Hoene is taking time to reflect on what his more than twenty years there have meant.

“I’m really, really grateful for the time I spent here,” he said, adding that his gratitude goes especially to the staff and customers. He said he was grateful for the support of his family and noted that son Andreas has been “the rock in the kitchen” for years.

Hoene said he is also dealing with the “fear and trauma” of the closure of the restaurant where he started working in 2001. Building owner (and former Pauline owner) Robert Fuller wants to sell the building, as Seven Days reported.

“It’s a beautiful place,” Hoene said of the building along US 7 near the Shelburne city line, “and the right team of people could do something great there.”

Hoene would like to continue working in the catering industry. He has trained many chefs, he said, and believes he has knowledge to share.

“I see myself as a creative chef,” says Hoene. “I would really like to continue that in some way, with the creativity and guidance/training of people.” He would rather focus on cooking and people than on the business side of things.

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

The knowledge he would bring from his years of experience, Hoene said, would include both the bad and the good. He said he could certainly help solve problems.

“I made all the mistakes,” Hoene said.

ccontact Brent Hallenbeck at [email protected].

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