No Further Cutbacks at Piret’s, Owners Say

Whither Piret’s, San Diego’s first attempt at a chain of fashionable eateries?

To hear the new management tell it, the future is bright, the concept is profitable and recent cutbacks are in the past.

“The undertone that we’re making Piret’s extinct is not true,” said Vicorp Specialty Restaurants President Thomas W. Doan, an investor in the leveraged buy-out from parent Vicorp Restaurants in Denver.

There will be “no further cuts in terms of restaurants or people” at Piret’s, Doan said.

Last month, in a fast-moving series of events, Piret’s closed its Grossmont Center location and its commissary in the Rose Canyon area of San Diego. In addition, VSR said it might close Piret’s in La Jolla and that, in January, it will transform the Piret’s site in the Imperial Bank Tower in downtown San Diego into a Boat House restaurant.

Although the cutbacks may have stopped, expansion isn’t in the offing either, Doan said.

Any excess capital at VSR, Doan said, will be spent on dinner house operations, not the six Piret’s outlets.

“Piret’s is a marvelous consumer concept,” he said Monday. “But we think it was a little overgrown for this market. What’s left will be extremely successful.”

Interestingly, Piret’s was sold in mid-1984 to Vicorp because founders George and Piret Munger had run into financial problems from expanding too much and too soon.