Soul Daddy MOA closes

By Rachel Hutton Thu., Jun. 30 2011 at 7:00 AM

www.souldaddy.com

Jamawn Woods's dream is dead.

We can't say we're surprised, but, wow, that was quick. America's Next Great Restaurant, Soul Daddy, closed its final location at the Mall of America this week after just two months in business due to poor performance and lackluster food.

The restaurant's two other locations in New York City and LA closed mid-month, with the winning restaurateur, Jamawn Woods, being alerted to the news via email. The MOA's closure comes on the heels of the recent decision to have Woods be more hands-on with the Minnesota location and refining the menu.

The Star Tribune reports that store employees were surprised by the closure and were referred to a Chipotle recruiter for assistance in finding new jobs.

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Oscar

Before choosing MOA if Soul Daddy were to ask any local person they would have realized MOA is the worst place ever to open the restaurant. Nobody chooses MOA for a nice dinner over uptown and downtown. Somethig about mall restaurants is just too lame. It was a bad move from the beginning.

Jason Dorweiler

Well the MOA gets tourists and considering that this concept was on TV, its the best location out of the 3. I actually worked for them as a kitchen manager and saw right away what they could have done to get out of the hole. They were so busy tweaking recipes every day. That should have been figured out already, not to mention all the other steps that they just over looked. Location, crowd, neighboring restaurants, ect. There were already 4 rib joints just in that area of the mall...I feel like no thought went into this concept and that is why it failed. To save the business, they should have started catering. I think cold salads could have worked on hot days, directed toward out door sports like softball, and frisbee golf, or whatever....anything. Who wants to go to the mall on an average slow weekday to eat on the 3rd floor after they took 10 minutes to park anyway, to receive inconsistent food? Nuff said, it angers me that they didn't listen.

JonnyBgood2me

That's the problem - they bought into the concept - the FOOD was poor value and bad. Period. It would have survived had the food been good - but choosing a high rent location just was terrible business acumen.

Honestly

No surprises here. It had bad word of mouth and I know the locations in LA and Minneapolis were in two very high-rent spaces. I told my friend it closed and his reaction, having only bothered going once, was "that teaches them for not putting fried chicken on the menu." Sure, his angle was healthy soul food, but the execution wasn't right and --more importantly-- his investment partners were just not prepared to put in the work as a proper business partner. In that regard, I feel for Mr. Woods, who got the short end of the stick.