The owners of three Ay! Jalisco Mexican restaurants in the area are moving from their leased Miracle Mile location to what was formerly the Vero Beach Sports Bar, on U.S. 1 near 19th Street.
Married owners Gloria Huitron and Pedro Nevarez bought the sports bar after it was on the market for about a year on Dec. 21 and plan to occupy the new location in July.
Nevarez said they decided to move because their lease at Treasure Coast Plaza has gone up 3 percent a year over the 15 years they’ve been at 465 21st St. The other reason is parking. Treasure Coast Plaza, where Publix is located, has gotten so busy in the last two years people on one-hour lunches can’t find parking out front. “They go someplace else, even though there is plenty of parking in the back,” Nevarez said.
After expansion and renovation, the new site will seat 165. The mortgage will be less than the current lease and HVAC efficiencies will also make the new site a better deal, he said.
Statistics for short-hop restaurant relocations are favorable.
“Restaurants that relocate within a mile have a 90-percent success ratio,” Billy Moss of Lambert Commercial Real Estate said.
The restaurant’s booths, custom made in Tonala, Jalisco, where Huitron was born, are too long for the new space, so the couple will travel to Tonala soon to commission new ones, meeting up with cousins, who are also restaurateurs. Nevarez will again do the kind of custom tile work that adds to the atmosphere in the current location.
“It took me a month, at night,” he said of the tilework at the Treasure Coast Plaza location.
Huitron and Nevarez met in Melbourne where she was visiting family, who also are restaurant owners. They married 21 years ago and shortly afterward opened their first restaurant together.
Huitron was practicing medicine in Mexico and planned to pursue it here, but it would have required two more years of study and certification at some distance. Marriage, children and the family’s restaurants engaged her time first.
The couple’s four sons, who range in age from 9 to 17, are encouraged to “pursue their education,” Nevarez said. “If they show interest in the business later, that’s OK.” The eldest is already interested, he added.
