One of the local examples of the  slow food movement is closing. 

Shadowbrook Salad Co.,  5445 Red Rock Lane, will sell off as much of its perishable inventory as it can on Friday, said General Manager Tony Loth, whose wife, mother, dad and brother Andy are partners in the corporation that owned and operated the restaurant.

The buffet-service restaurant featured locally grown greens from brother Kevin’s Shadowbrook farms and other local producers, a daily entree feature and gelato for dessert.

Thirty employees, almost all part-time, were let go Tuesday, he said.  Friends, volunteers and family worked the restaurant Wednesday and Thursday, Loth said,  to help get enough revenue to pay the bills.

  “After a little over 13 months of operation, we have made the determination that Shadowbrook Salad Company must close its doors,” Loth wrote in an email. “We started out in a deep hole and were never really able to dig ourselves out of it and now we find ourselves out of money and out of resources to keep it going.  I still believe firmly that the concept can and would be successful but we fell victim to the #1 cause of restaurant failures - undercapitalization.  My vision was simply too big for our budget and I was too slow to respond to things that needed to be changed. “

The concept was fine, Loth said, and the execution was good.

“We just couldn’t hang out  long enough to gain a foothold that could sustain us,” he said.  “The location maybe could have been a little better or we could’ve been a little smaller.”

   Shadowbrook Farms, meanwhile, owned and operated separately by brother Kevin Loth, is not financially connected and is not affected, except, as Tony Loth said, emotionally.

He acknowledged a significant decline in the restaurant’s sales in the past few weeks, as the nation’s financial industry came under stress, but circumstances were difficult before then, he said.

“Really, sales were lower than they needed to be, but no dramatic drop-off, until just a few weeks ago, then it dropped like a rock,” Loth said. 

“Gas prices hurt, people cutting back over spring and summer, but really, the economic impact was more looking to the future,” he said.  “If the economy was strong, I’d be more optimistic we could hang on ‘til it rebounded,  but we couldn’t wait.  It could be a few months to several years.”

He looked for investors who might put up the money to keep Shadowbrook going, he said, but couldn’t find any.

“We just ran out of resources,” Loth said.