It’s hard to express how moved we are by the public response to the fact that Perk on Main will be closing at the 6 Main St. location at the end of 2017. Because I will fall greatly short if I attempt to describe how much your outpouring means to us, I will leave it at this: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
6 Main Street Durham has been such a huge part of our lives for 10+ years now. Amazing things have happened within these four walls. We have fine-tuned every inch of the space ten times over. While it’s devastating to think of losing it, it’s not our nature to feel sorry for ourselves.
Many of our customers are asking why we won’t be able to renew our lease. The short answer is that our current lease, which began January 1 of this year, has a daily water usage restriction of 260 gallons per day, and though we have reduced our water usage from a ten year historical amount of approximately 850 gallons per day to approximately 375 gallons per day, the landlord sent me a certified letter on May 5, 2017, stating that because we did not adhere to the water usage restriction, there will be no extensions of the lease past the end of 2017.
To add some context to this, we had been operating for the past 10 years without a water restriction. Without another location readily available to us, and very little time, we agreed to the 260 gallon restriction, hoping that we could conserve enough to meet this restriction.
As I said, with great effort, we have managed to decrease our water usage to approximately 375 gallons a day so far for all of 2017. However, despite this progress, the landlord’s certified letter arrived.
Will we rebuild? We are exploring all options and I will be as open and transparent as always. Owning the three Perk’s has been extremely rewarding but also extremely difficult. This type of set back has really shaken me. Moving a restaurant is no cheap undertaking and to do so the location would have to be “awesome.”
So while our future is unclear at this moment, the Perk staff is resilient and no matter what is thrown our way, I know we all will all land on our feet.
Should Durham not find a new location, I believe our loyal customers will find us in Guilford or Middletown. We will continue to make great crepes and coffee, and we hope we will continue to make people smile.
We will continue honoring our commitment to our communities and our environment. First and foremost, we remain forever grateful for all of the wonderful people who are part of the Perk family, including our loyal customers.
Stay tuned for more updates.
In Gratitude,
Katie