HAPPY DONUTS Closing: Another Victim Of Greed?

(Google street view image)

For those of you who might love hitting up the Happy Donuts shop in Palo Alto at 3916 El Camino Real, brace yourselves.  Happy Donuts will be closing its doors on Friday night, June 6th, 2014, at 10pm for the final time at that location.

And that's a shame.  I've never been there and not seen a crowded dining area, or at least 3, 4 or 5 customers enjoying the ambiance.

So why is the 24-hr shop closing up?  Because the landlord won't renew their contract.  One local paper put it that the "landlord turned down their request for a lease renewal." Maybe it's me, but I see that as wanting a new tenant they can charge more.

The Happy Donuts owner said they have a new location at 1062 S. De Anza Blvd in San Jose, but that does not help anyone in or around that soon-to-be-closed present location.

The next closest Happy Donuts is off in Redwood City on El Camino Real.


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This isn't the first time I've seen landlords get priced out of their location (if this is what's happening to Happy Donuts).

A business park in Menlo Park, where BevMo now sits on El Camino Real, used to have a sandwich shop, a Verizon store and a Chili's.  Having spoken with management of both the sandwich shop and Chili's, I had learned that both of them were forced to move because the owner/landlord jacked their rents up so high that they had to move.

And sadly, rather than languish in financial failure, BevMo moved in where Chili's used to be, and few other businesses took over the other spots.

But that's what it is here in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.  Or as one local has told me their nick names are, Shallow Alto and Mental Park.  Too funny.

But money is money does.  The rest of us are just victims of it or to it.

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