The chicken restaurant Nashbird will close three of its four locations including those in Edmond, Midwest City and Norman, according to the owner’s Monday Facebook post.
Nashbird is the third local restaurant in Norman to close this month. Following Penny Hill Deli’s closure on Friday and 405 Burger Bar on West Main Street, which announced in a Facebook post it would close its doors on Jan. 31 after three years of serving Normanites.
“The simple fact is that traffic count and revenue has been down at each of those locations,” Nashbird owner Marc Dunham wrote in his Facebook post. “I watched over the last 12 months and tried everything that I knew how to increase revenue. Our teams did the best they could to try and help with this, but we failed in our attempts.”
All three businesses that announced closure this month did so due to a lack of profitability, according to the owners.
“I'm not going to make excuses,” Dunham wrote. “I know we made some mistakes, and as the owner, I am responsible for all of them. Opening these restaurants was my lifetime dream as a chef, and it has been the most difficult 12 months of my professional career.”
Nashbird opened in Norman in 2020, amid delays caused by COVID-19. The restaurant offers spicy Nashville fried chicken available in tenders, nuggets and sandwiches, along with sides and cold slushies.
Lubomir Litov, an OU associate professor of finance, wrote in an email to OU Daily that it is not surprising businesses choose to scale down or even close in a high interest rate environment with elevated inflation, such as the current economic environment.
Litov wrote, "Recession is an opportune time to become more efficient, cut costs, conserve cash, and search for innovative ways to address customer demand while making profit.” For many businesses, cost cutting can include reducing personnel and increasing efficiency may involve choosing an alternative location where rents and taxes are lower, customer traffic is similar or by sourcing local suppliers at a discount as opposed to wholesale ones.
“It is also important to point out that while many businesses may need to close down in such environment, this is not all gloom news,” Litov wrote. “For those businesses, whose bottom line permits sufficient profitability to stay open, this is an opportune time to expand further and growth, as they could target customers of businesses that exit the market.”
The Nashbird location at Ninth Street in Oklahoma City will remain open, according to Dunham.
This story was edited by Anusha Fathepure and Ismael Lele. Zoe De Leon and Grace Rhodes copy edited this story.
