Poached, the mom-and-pop daytime café owned by husband/wife Kenneth Vandereecken and Brandi Lostracco at Galleria Shoppes at Vanderbilt since 2011, will close its doors May 28 and not by choice.
“I thank all the people who have supported us, and I hope that people who come into this space appreciate everyone as much as we do,” Lostracco said.
“We spent all this time developing relationships with everyone in the community: the schools, the firefighters, the police. We consider ourselves wholly a part of this community, and to be told and shown that all of that can be pushed aside is shocking and surprising.”
When the couple was within six months of their lease expiring, Vandereecken emailed and texted the Galleria Shoppes at Vanderbilt’s management company, asking to see terms of the lease extension because “for a business, you need the ability to budget everything far in advance and to plan for your future.”
“At the beginning of the year, we were trying to get our lease extension; it’s in our lease that we get a five-year extension as an option.”