It’s so hard to see a success story fall apart.
Especially in a notoriously difficult business like restaurants, where we need every win we can get!
Sadly, a beloved – and innovative – grilled-cheese restaurant, which was featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” and “Man vs. Food” has called it quits.
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Melt Bar & Grilled was founded in 2006 by Matt Fish in Lakewood, Ohio.
It was pretty much an instant hit, with a combination of traditional favorites and innovative new menu items.
You could get the “Kindergarten” – cheese and bread, you know, traditional grilled cheese, “Wake & Bacon” – grilled cheese + eggs + bacon, and all that sort of thing…
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And you could also get some really different stuff.
Like:
– Chorizo and potato (spicy sausage and potato hash with sharp cheddar cheese)
– Mom’s meatloaf (meatloaf, ketchup glaze, mashed garlic, muenster)
– Lake Erie monster (fried fish filet, slaw, tartar sauce, and American cheese)
And don’t even get me started on the “Parmageddon…”
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This was exactly the kind of cool, authentic local place that “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives” looked for, and it was featured on an episode in 2010.
Not surprisingly, business soared, which led Matt to think about a big expansion…
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Melt Bar & Grilled opened its second location in Cleveland Heights in 2010, then a commissary in 2011, and then tons more locations.
By the end of 2017, Melt had 13 locations scattered across Northeastern Ohio, with ambitions for far more.
Unfortunately, the success was short-lived…
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You don’t need me to recount everything that went wrong for restaurants in 2020.
Suffice to say that Melt suffered all the same challenges that faced every restaurant then:
– Forced closures
– Collapsing sales
– The need to reinvent for takeout and delivery
– Much higher sanitation, testing, and cleaning requirements
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Despite cutting operations to the bone to try and keep things going, the chain was struggling hard in 2022 as rampant inflation drove up food prices.
Every restaurant faced this precise nightmare scenario:
Food costs were up, labor costs were up…
And if you passed those costs on to customers, many of them would get mad and leave.
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This was the hard math of the 2022 inflation surge…
Longtime relationships changed from an asset to a liability almost overnight.
If a new restaurant or new food product had a high price, that might be annoying, but consumers could look around and decide whether they wanted to pay it.
But if a longtime, beloved hangout raised prices…it felt like a betrayal.
It was an impossible situation.
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So restaurants had three options:
– Raise prices anyway and take the hit;
– Find ways to cut costs (remember “shrinkflation”?);
– Just take the hit on margin and hope to make it up in volume.
Of course, many restaurants (including Melt) just didn’t have enough margin to sacrifice.
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And so, at first gradually – and then faster and faster, as things snowballed – Melt shut down stores.
– Columbus North closed in July 2022
– Canton and Dayton locations shut down in January 2023
– Independence and Avon were gone by early 2024
– By Summer 2024, there were only four restaurants left.
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In June 2024, Melt filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing a crushing $1.8 million of debt to Huntington Bank plus $1.6 million in late rent owed to landlords.
Matt Fish, the founder, decided to bet everything on a single location and shut down everything else in a bid to cut costs and turn the page on a new chapter for the company.
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Unfortunately, things didn’t work out.
Sales stayed weak at the single Lakewood location, and with looming bankruptcy costs…it was just too much.
Earlier this year, Fish announced that they would permanently close the Lakewood flagship location, ending Melt’s nearly 20-year run in Northeastern Ohio.
Such a sad ending for a chain that, honestly, deserved better.
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So there you have it – a beloved local favorite that ultimately got wiped out by macroeconomic factors beyond anyone’s control.
Have you seen local chains go under recently? Any amazing food I should cover next?
Let us know in the comments!
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