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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-10-23 Euless Articles A Neapolitan-pizza chain closes in Fort Worth. But a Euless location is about to open BY ROBERT PHILPOT rphilpot@star-telegram.com October 11, 2018 10:42 AM You won’t be able to get this “fast-bake” pizza (and numerous other specialty pizzas) at MidiCi The Neapolitan Pizza Company’s Fort Worth location, which has closed, but you will be able to get it (and them) at a Euless location that’s about to have its grand opening. Courtesy of MidiCi Pizza RESTAURANTS MidiCi The Neapolitan Pizza Company, a California-based fast-casual chain, opened its first Tarrant County location in February in Fort Worth. The shop, at the LeftBank center on West Seventh that also features Tom Thumb, Hopdoddy Burger Bar and other food stops, came with a certain amount of fanfare. It closed the weekend of Oct. 6-7, with a note from franchiseer Michael Crain that despite his and his wife Joanna’s best efforts, they could not generate enough sales to maintain the business. Bud Kennedy / #ReadLocal ✔@EatsBeat The @myMidici pizza in Fort Worth, which got off to a haphazard start and consistently suffered from service problems, has closed in LeftBank 6:18 PM - Oct 6, 2018 “[It] was a tough run,” Crain said in reply to a Star-Telegram email. “Still stings since on paper all should have been great.” In a later phone interview, Crain said that they burned through a lot of cash early, and that the restaurant was more expensive than they’d been led to believe. And not enough people were coming in to balance things out. “The numbers that we saw that they do in California, we never even got close to here,” Crain says. “On paper it looked great, but here it just didn’t work.” MidiCi Fort Worth had trouble finding a groove, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Like Pizza Snob, Blaze Fast-Fire’d Pizza and other fast-casual places, it had a build-your-own section, but also offered nearly 20 specialty pizza. The Fort Worth store was arranged to that you came in at the end of the ingredient line and then had to make your way to the registers, where a computerized ordering system led to some confusion. Early on, customers were getting their pizzas before their appetizers and even occasionally dessert before their pizzas. Crain soon changed the restaurant to table service, and offered specials on Mondays and Wednesday to draw customers in. He brought in local chefs for events in which they showed their own pizza skills. Although there had been complaints about service, my wife and I ate there a couple of weeks before it closed and, whatever anyone else’s experiences may have been, our server was excellent and the staff was welcoming. But Crain acknowledges that service was a problem — as was staffing as a whole. As Fort Worth’s number of restaurants has expanded, it’s been harder for a lot of restaurateurs to hold on to staff who will go to other restaurants where they can make more money. “We had a lot of really great shining stars,” Crain says. “But then we had a lot of other staff that seemed to move from place to place. When you talk about hourly workers, they’re moving for 25 cents [an hour more] to somewhere else.” But there was more to it than that for MidiCi Fort Worth; one manager left midway through construction, another left citing a fatigue diagnosis before the restaurant opened, another lasted four days, another lied about the amount of experience he had. “We just never found anybody, to be honest, that loved the place as much as we did,” Crain says. “And wanted to care for it as much as we did.” Social-media comments about possible factors in the closing mentioned high rents, traffic and parking, the latter usually not a big problem at LeftBank, where besides Hopdoddy there are locations of 85°C Bakery Cafe, Nekter Juice Bar and liquid-nitrogen ice-cream shop Creamistry, with a location of Colorado-based breakfast chain Snooze: An AM Eatery scheduled to open before the end of October. One of the reasons parking is typically not a problem at LeftBank is that the large lot separates Hopdoddy, easily visible from West Seventh, from most of the other food places, which aren’t easily seen from West Seventh. “There’s traffic flowing down that street,” Crain says, “but anecdotally, we would get, ‘We didn’t know you were back there. I thought that because of the Tom Thumb being the only grocery store in a two and a half-mile radius, we would have a lot of traffic through there, but we just didn’t get that much.” The Tom Thumb does feel a little separated from the rest of the development, not facing any of the restaurants directly. And the West Seventh area is, of course, loaded with restaurants in a stretch that a little more than 10 years ago was fairly sparse, so there are a lot of restaurants competing for business. By coincidence, MidiCi’s Fort Worth closing came about a week before another franchisee is opening a location at Euless’ Glade Parks (which is also home to a Hopdoddy Burger Bar and multiple other restaurants — with more to come). The Euless MidiCi, which will have its grand opening Saturday and Sunday, is at 1310 Chisholm Trail Suite 800. We’re awaiting more info, but judging from photos on its Facebook page it will, like the Fort Worth one, have a tree in the middle of the dining. room. It looks like a smaller tree, though. Thach Le, the owner-operator of the Euless location, says that it has a dog-friendly patio as well as a nearby grassy area where children can play, making for a family-friendly restaurant. He says that he has a background in fashion design and has traveled a lot, including to Italy, and that he loves to cook Italian food. The Euless location will open as an order-at-the counter fast-casual, but servers will bring food out to customers and handle other details. It is possible that the pizza-before-salad thing will happen early on — true Neapolitan pizza cooks quickly, and some of MidiCi’s salads have 10 to 12 ingredients and take time to make — but Le says that he will be watching to fix any problems with the ordering system. For updates, visit https://www.mymidici.com or @MidiciEuless on Facebook. MidiCi also has locations in Dallas’ West Village, with another one coming to Preston Hollow Village as well as one coming to Addison. NORTHEAST TARRANT Euless gets its first liquor store Total Wine & More opened Thursday in Euless. This location on South Hulen was the chain’s first location in Fort Worth. File Star-Telegram BY ELIZABETH CAMPBELL liz@star-telegram.com October 11, 2018 04:44 PM Updated October 11, 2018 04:44 PM EULESS It didn’t take long for the first liquor store to open in Euless. Almost a year after voters approved liquor stores in commercial areas, Total Wine & More opened Thursday morning at 2501 Rio Grande Blvd. in the fast-growing Glade Parks development. The 17,000-square foot store features a walk-in humidor and temperature-controlled wine room for rare selections. In November, Euless voters approved allowing liquor stores by a wide margin. In preparation, the City Council voted to allow zoning for liquor stores in commercial areas. Houston-based Spec’s Wines, Spirits, & Finer Foods is planning a store the River Walk Development in the 900 block of East Harwood Road, near the homes in the Estates of Bear Creek subdivision. NORTHEAST TARRANT This new ‘medical home’ in Northeast Tarrant has a drive-through pharmacy, dental clinic The JPS Health Network built a new “medical home” in Euless to replace this outdated clinic in Bedford. Paul Moseley pmoseley@star-telegram.com BY ELIZABETH CAMPBELL liz@star-telegram.com October 12, 2018 01:25 PM Updated October 12, 2018 11:03 PM Senior citizens and others in Northeast Tarrant County who have difficulty traveling can now to go one place for most of their health-care needs. Thanks to a newly opened JPS health clinic. The JPS Medical Home Northeast Tarrant at 3200 W. Euless Blvd. opened Thursday. The $12-million clinic provides primary care, women’s health, behavioral health, optometry, laboratory, radiology and a drive-through pharmacy. “Today is a day of accomplishment. This clinic is a prototype of what other clinics can look like in Tarrant County,” said Robert Earley, the president and CEO of the JPS Health Network. “This is all about keeping people healthy.” The clinic replaces the JPS Northeast Health Center in Bedford, which was overcrowded. Patients waiting for prescriptions lined up in hallways and those waiting for dental appointments often had to sit on the floor. Best Pairs Skaters in the World Are Training in Euless The Russian team of Vladimir Morozov and Evgenia Tarasova is training alongside the top U.S. team -- Ashley Cain and Timothy LeDuc By Kristin Dickerson Published at 5:02 PM CDT on Oct 16, 2018 | Updated at 6:51 PM CDT on Oct 16, 2018 Two-time Olympic Gold Medalist pairs skater Maxim Trankov discusses his transition from competitor to coaching specialist. The ice at the Dr Pepper StarCenter in Euless is world class. First to practice on it Tuesday morning is a Russian pairs team, currently ranked number one in the world. But Texans Ashley Cain and Timothy LeDuc, ranked number one in the U.S., are close behind them and said practicing close to their rivals is helpful. “Just to see them skating and training, and their process — it pushes us and it gives us a target, basically, to aim for,” said LeDuc. “Like this is the top of the world, this is where we’re going, so this is what we need to do to get there.” “We want to be on that top step as well, but we know that we need to get their on our own terms,” said Cain. “But it’s really nice to be pushed by them — especially going into such a big competition.” The Russian team, Vladimir Morozov and Evgenia Tarasova, has been training in Texas for the past week. Coaches Peter and Darlene Cain are their hosts, they are also the coaches of Cain (their daughter) and LeDuc. They’re all preparing for the 2018 Skate America competition in Everett, Washington this weekend. The Russian team of coaches includes Maxim Trankov. He’s a two-time Olympic Gold medalist and a first- time visitor to Texas. “It’s like really, really authentic America,” Trankov said. “Because you can see the cowboys and the beautiful animals, farm animals, and it’s like a really cool experience.” Spending time in the U.S. before competing here helps the Russian skaters fine-tune, while sharing practice ice with other elite skaters is bound to make each athlete better. “So, it just kind of shows how everyone is working together now in this sport and I think that that’s what’s going to push this sport forward — especially here in America,” Cain said. Grandmother Stabbed Baby Girl, Burned Her in Oven: Police Ashley and Timothy will also head to Moscow to train on the Russian team’s home ice before the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating series competition in that country. The Skate America competition is Saturday and Sunday, it will air on NBC on Sunday at 11:30 a.m.