CBD Italian Restaurant Coppa Spuntino to Close

CBD Italian favourite Coppa Spuntino will close at the end of the month. The restaurant’s last service will be on Friday March 27.

Coppa Spuntino’s closure comes as Brisbane restaurants struggle for patronage in the face of the escalating Covid-19 outbreak, but co-owner Tom Sanceau told Broadsheet earlier today that the move has been on the cards for as long as six months.

“It’s been struggling for a while,” he says. “We pay a lot of rent here and when we signed up five years ago it was a different economy.”

Sanceau says the market facing restaurants in Brisbane is completely different to that of late 2014, when he opened Coppa Spuntino with business partner Bonnie Shearston.

“The economy has been slowing down,” he says. “And there’s so much competition from new restaurants. There are so many more choices and then there are the delivery services.”

It will be the second closure for Sanceau and Shearston in three months after they wrapped up their well-regarded Pollen eatery in Los Angeles at the end of 2019. But Sanceau is philosophical, saying the closures have been relatively strategic.

“I’m glad we closed Pollen because Los Angeles has been shut down [because of Covid-19] and all the restaurants are closed − they’re offering takeaway only … it’s an extreme, extreme situation there."

Coppa’s enormously popular burger joint neighbour Red Hook , also owned by Sanceau and Shearston, will continue to operate as usual.

“I hope so, anyway,” Sanceau says. “We’re going to be down on trade — it’s just great uncertainty at the moment. Every day in the city I’m seeing fewer and fewer people. People aren’t staying around after work. I’m speaking to banks, I’m speaking to government agencies, I’m speaking to landlords. I’m trying to say ‘help’ and hopefully they will.”

Sanceau says he and Shearston are currently assessing how they might operate a “drive-through” option for Red Hook, running food out to cars on Queen and Adelaide streets. But he says there are always reasons to be positive, and that he and Shearston have other projects in development.

“I’m optimistic,” he says. “Brisbane people love to go out. There are so many news stories out there and people need to take the necessary precautions, but they have to support small business … It’s going to be tough but it will get easier. If we can just make these places last, even if it with much reduced trade, as long as there is some trade hopefully they’ll get through and be there for the longterm.”