A Busy Vermont Town, Where Even Taco Bell Fails

By Terry Adamson
Dateline:
Rutland, VT December 1st 2003

Rutland is a small, but busy city in Central Vermont that is home to some 18,000 residents and is located near to the ever-popular ski and snowboard area of Killington.
It is in this town that there exists an awkward secret about Mexico - Its not actually about Mexico, its about its mexican restaurants - the fact the city doesn't have any. Rutland Vermont no longer has any Mexican restaurants.

You may ask why this is important, does it really matter if there is no Chick-Filet in New York City, nobody eats grits in Boston and so there are no Chalupha's served in Rutland - perhaps not. It is not really about the fact that they don't have any mexican restaurants, its the fact that they did and they lost them all.

The general population in Rutland are made up of an eclectic bunch, including skiers, vacationers, locals and deer.
The city has the usual smattering of fast-food joints like McDonald's, KFC and Subway. There is also a handful of diner style outlets like Denny's and Friendly's.
According to the 2000 census of its 18,000 inhabitants only 0.15%, that's 23 people, are Mexican.

Rutland once had a Taco Bell - it failed after a couple of years. A failed Taco Bell restaurant is about as rare as a dirty McDonalds or a KFC that uses Olestra, so lets face it - it doesnt happen very often - so rare in fact that Taco Bell didnt even want to talk about it.
The failed Taco Bell still had some life though, they knocked down the old one and built a brand new one about a mile away - A sparklingly brand new one in fact - that remains brand new to this day as its been empty for seven years - no-one wants to take on the franchise, especially after the last failure. There was also the un-confirmed story about Brian Johnson, a 23-year-old tractor repairman suing Taco Bell in a recent lawsuit because when he shoved his chicken soft taco down his pants for a dare he received second degree burns.
Maybe it just wasn't worth it for Taco Bell to be in Rutland. (More on this story at http://tinyurl.com/2q4bd)

The most recent bastions of Mexican food in Rutland were The Black Cactus Cafe and Candeleros Restaurant, two fine Mexican establishments, both on Wales Street that opened to much fanfare but both miraculously failed within a few months.
Candeleros, in particular, had a huge amount of investment poured into it. According to the city assessor's office five condominium units were rolled into one, to create a 5000 square feet, 120 seat restaurant. This restaurant was designed and decorated with a Southwestern and Mexican flavor, using green lumber for an aging effect, and multi layered rough plastered walls with cream, yellow and orange coloring. Underneath were grayed pine floors. The chairs and booths were lined with pillows and bolsters. A greenhouse room faced the street. The copper-topped horseshoe bar seated 30. This was an impressive restaurant in almost every way.
What was most remarkable about Candeleros was the fact that it could not bring enough customers to achieve break-even point - it failed in less than eighteen months flat.
The Black Cactus Cafe, on the other hand, was aimed at the diner style Mexican food market. It opened after Candeleros but failed just 9 months in.
Mucho reasons were cited for the failures including liquor license problems, violent customer incidents and general lack of customers - Although the owner of Candeleros did have Rave party's on Saturday nights to get some foot traffic, but he didn't manage to significantly increase the take.
You can read the local newspaper story about the closings at http://tinyurl.com/yrqv3

According to Greg Masters, a customer at the Skye Box Grille at Killington "Skiers at Killington were livid when they both closed, we have no Mexican food at Killington and had to travel all the way to Rutland, now they cannot even do that"
It seems that skiers at Killington, who are an eclectic mix of New York and Boston weekend warriors, were not on the marketing radar of the failed Mexican establishments.
Jeff Miles, another Skye Box Grille regular, says "I loved going down there, but most people in Killington didn't even know it existed, it was always worth the trip for me though"

Franchise restaurants are not allowed on the Killington access road (I assume to protect the Green-Mountain feel) so people must travel from Killington to Rutland to get their fix of Chicken McNuggets or Colonel Sanders secret recipe.
Many people in Killington cited the fact that the Rutland police often hassle out-of-state license plate holders more so than the locals as a reason to avoid Rutland all together, but general consensus showed that the awareness of these establishments was very poor, or non-existent, amongst the regular skiers and boarders.
"Don't expect Rutland local-folk to appreciate Mexican food anytime soon" added Janice Stern, a cashier working at a mountain store on the Killington access road during her school-break "I am from Florida and I loved it"

So what are the plans for Mexican food in Rutland and Killington? "Don't expect anything soon" says Janice "But you are welcome to come to my house tonite" "Monday is always Taco night" she added.
In the spirit of journalistic research we did go to see Janice but her Taco wasn't quite what we expected.