THE BOSTON COMMON is the oldest public park in the nation and a crossroads for tourists, residents, and workers, yet the park’s lone restaurant is closing after years of unprofitability.
After spending $1 million in 2013 to transform a long-closed, octagon-shaped bathroom called a “comfort station” into a restaurant and then incurring total losses of $2.2 million over the past 11 years, the Florida-based Earl of Sandwich chain asked the city of Boston to allow it to shut down its Boston Common location at the end of next month, four years before its 15-year lease was due to expire.
The city granted the request and sometime in the fall will issue a request for proposals seeking a new tenant for the Boston Common location, which in its previous life was dubbed the Pink Palace for the pink tinge of its stone masonry.
“We are now open to beer and wine as part of the food operations, which is different from the prior lease,” said Ryan Woods, the city’s parks commissioner. Asked if the successful bidder would be allowed to expand the 660-square-foot building to accommodate some indoor seating, Woods noted the Boston Common is a national and local landmark. “So there are restrictions that may not allow it, but every proposal will be carefully considered,” Woods said.
Officials at Planet Hollywood, the parent company of the 54-store Earl of Sandwich chain, did not respond to requests for comment. The franchise operation has 32 restaurants in the US, eight in the Philippines, eight in Korea, five in Canada, and one in Paris.
The city’s quest to find a new tenant is likely to set off a lively debate about what’s needed on Boston Common since the Earl of Sandwich, home to what the chain claims is “The World’s Greatest Hot Sandwich,” did not cut it.
Despite the prestigious address of Boston Common,the site has a number of drawbacks for running a restaurant. For one, the building itself is tiny. There is no room for indoor seating, so the restaurant offers takeout and some outdoor seating from April to October, and even then its sales are subject to weather conditions.
It’s also out of the way, somewhat near the center of the Common between athletic fields, tennis courts, and the Parkman Bandstand. The original comfort station was reportedly built in the 1920s, shut down in the 1970s, and then refurbished and reopened as the Earl of Sandwich in 2013 after extensive repairs and retrofitting.
Competing restaurants surround Boston Common and the Common itself features a beer garden at the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets in the summer and push cart vendors selling snacks and drinks at various high traffic spots in the park.
Leora Lanz, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Hospitality Administration, said any new tenant at the location will have to drum up sales. “Putting signs out on streets surrounding the park would be a good idea at a minimum,” she said. “There’s an opportunity for the operator to establish and market a restaurant with a ‘sense of place.’ A restaurant in a park can be positioned as a destinationunto its own— a place where people who work or live or visit consider it as a ‘go-to.’ ”
Fromthe get-go, the Earl of Sandwich lost money at its Boston Common location. Even so, Robert Earl, the CEO of Planet Hollywood,the parent company,confidently predicted the tiny restaurant on the Common would win a loyal following.
“We’re here for the duration of our lease,” he told CommonWealth Beacon in 2018. “I’m very much someone who doesn’t like to give in.”
In an effort to turn things around, Earl said at the time that he was planning on opening more locations in the Boston area that would allow for “expansion of our brand.” That didn’t happen. The only other location he opened locally, at Logan Airport, was shuttered years ago.
Earl is no relation to the royal Earl of Sandwich in England, but the company’s website says the sandwich restaurant is the brainchild of Orlando Montagu, the younger son of the 11th Earl of Sandwich and a direct descendant of the fourth Earl, who is credited with popularizing the sandwich in Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th century.
According to correspondence between the restaurant chain and the city obtained through a public records request, Earl of Sandwich officials remained confident they could succeed on the Common right up until March. David Snodgrass, the director of operations at Earl of Sandwich’s corporate headquarters, predicted “a killer 2024 season” in a March email to Boston’s parks department.
Meanwhile, the company wasn’t paying its $50,000 annual rent. Stephen Bickerton, deputy parks commissioner, demanded the company pay what it owed.
“This is an annual issue with Earl of Sandwich paying their rent late (sometimes by months) for the last several years,” he wrote to Earl on April 11. “This is a breach of the contract, as you know, and not the first breach. If we do not have a check in hand by end of day Monday, we will be moving to terminate the Earl of Sandwich’s tenancy on the Boston Common.”
A month later, the city of Boston and the Earl of Sandwich executed a termination agreement ending the lease as of September 30. As part of the separation, the company only has to pay the city $25,000 for rent this year — not the regular $50,000 — to cover just the six months the chain will actually be operating on Boston Common.