The Demise of Empanada Joe's

"Eat Beautiful. Feel Beautiful." That was the slogan on the menus at Empanada Joe's, a fast food joint on Broadway and 111th Street, a stone's throw from Columbia University. Apparently not every one believed in that slogan. Empanada Joe's is no more. According to the Daily Spectator( February 18, 2009), the campus paper, "most Columbia students and local residents seem glad to see it go." One student was quoted as saying, "I didn't like it. It was very expensive and the empanadas were small. Afterwards, I felt sick."
The first time I visited the restaurant, I didn't get sick, but I was disappointed in the size and price of the empanadas ( meat-filled patties,that look something like a turnover). I wrote a letter to the manager a short time later. Below is the text of the letter:

"My friend Klaus and I went to your restaurant on the evening of August 14, 2008. We shared an empanada (Argentine beef) and a Tuscan pasta salad. Both were very good but pricey and, to our disappointment, very small. The price would have been justified if the empanada was larger. It was so small, it would take three or four of them to fill me up.
I hope that you will make the empanada and the salads larger or offer more than one size (priced accordingly). Otherwise, customers will not feel they are getting their money's worth."

Klaus (who is 75 years old) would go in there from time to time and try to give them advice on improving their business but they would laugh it off as though he were a slightly demented old man.Every time we passed by, there was hardly any customers. He predicted that they wouldn't last. He was right. As another Columbia student pointed out to the Spectator reporter, "When there is Chipotle next door, who is going to go to Empanada Joe's?" Why, indeed.