GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Blue Star Din­er has closed, yet again.

In a no­tice post­ed on so­cial me­dia, the restau­rant ex­plained to its pa­trons, “Af­ter count­less milk­shakes, siz­zling grills, and juke­box tunes, we have made the bit­ter­sweet de­ci­sion to close our doors. Our last meal will be served on Au­gust 31 (to­mor­row).

“This was not an easy choice. Blue Star Din­er has al­ways been more than a restau­rant-it’s been a place where friends gath­ered, birth­days were toast­ed, love sto­ries be­gan, and mem­o­ries were made over com­fort food and cof­fee re­fills.

“To every­one who sup­port­ed us and made Blue Star Din­er feel like home, thank you from the bot­tom of our hearts. Your love, laugh­ter, and loy­al­ty have meant every­thing to us. As the juke­box would say, ‘So long, ba­by, and don’t for­get to rock around the clock!’ with love and grat­i­tude, The Blue Star Din­er fam­i­ly,” the post stat­ed.

This is not the first time the es­tab­lish­ment had closed.

Blue Star Din­er ini­tial­ly opened its doors in No­vem­ber 2019 and the busi­ness was on an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry, es­pe­cial­ly when it start­ed op­er­at­ing around the clock over week­ends. Then the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic struck in March 2020 and busi­ness fell off.

The restau­rant strug­gled post-COVID and had ini­tial­ly planned to close in June 2023, but pub­lic re­ac­tion prompt­ed the restau­rant to re­open from Ju­ly to De­cem­ber 31 2023.

Then in 2024, Blue Star Din­er which falls un­der the Trot­ters Group, re­opened at the Fes­ti­val Plaza in Movi­etowne, Port-of-Spain.

Trot­ters Group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Pe­ter George Jr told Guardian Me­dia then that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.6 mil­lion was pumped in­to the new es­tab­lish­ment.

That site was pre­vi­ous­ly oc­cu­pied by an­oth­er restau­rant, Zanz­ibar, which was forced to ter­mi­nate op­er­a­tions in 2021 due to the eco­nom­ic fall­out from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

George al­so said the Blue Star Din­er brand was hope­ful that mov­ing to Movi­etowne, a high traf­fic area, would dri­ve busi­ness to the restau­rant.

“Blue Star Din­er had huge suc­cess pre-COVID, but nev­er re­cov­ered post. It was a traf­fic dri­ver orig­i­nal­ly but nev­er re­gained mo­men­tum. So the de­ci­sion was to re­lo­cate to a high traf­fic area with the right de­mo­graph­ic. And Movi­etowne was the best choice,” he then ex­plained.

Of­fi­cials of Blue Star Din­er when con­tact­ed on Thurs­day said they had no com­ment to make on the clo­sure.

Charles Car­val­ho, of the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, said yes­ter­day that while he did not know the rea­son for the clo­sure, the as­so­ci­a­tion in­tends to meet with restau­rants next week to find out what are their cur­rent chal­lenges and to de­ter­mine pos­si­ble so­lu­tions.