SAN ANTONIO – As Jason Nuttall-Fiske cleaned up the counters at Bubby’s Jewish Soul Food on its closing day, he said he was proud.
“It’s easy to have hope,” Nuttall-Fiske said. “This is not just a place to come and get a corned beef or a pastrami sandwich and walk away. It is a place that, in its foundations, is cultural.”
Nuttall-Fiske and his husband, Charlie Nuttall, opened Bubby’s nearly two years ago, in November 2021. The Jewish bakery and deli is named after Nuttall-Fiske’s grandmother and uses some of her recipes too.
Both owners said day-to-day sales can’t keep up with how much it costs to operate a storefront.
“It’s definitely sad that it’s coming to an end, but I’m very proud of what we did here,” Nuttall said. “We had a very loyal group of people that came in all the time, but it just wasn’t quite enough to sustain it.”
Nuttall-Fiske said a storefront wasn’t sustainable for Bubby’s, so he’s considering creating a subscription service to sell his bagels.
“My intention now is to reimagine the business,” Nuttall-Fiske said. “It is taking the storefront method, which I think not only for me but for so many has become unsustainable, and you restructure it into something with the tools you have.”
Subscription services are popular for magazines, streaming services and even some clothing stores, but both owners said they see this as the future of local food sales.
“I think we need in this post-COVID world, there’s a need to sort of reimagine some of the experiences we’ve had before,” Nuttall said. “It’s a change of how we wanted to do things. But I think there’s there’s a bright future ahead.”
Nuttall-Fiske said this plan is still in the initial stages, but he’s planning on setting up a subscription service that people can sign onto to get bagels on a scheduled basis. He said this would help with staffing costs, food excess and managing day-to-day expenses.
“It’s about consistency with small businesses,” Nuttall-Fiske said.
This week, Nuttall-Fiske said he would start the planning process of this service with those subscribed to Bubby’s email list.
While closing day has come, Nuttall said he’s feeling hopeful about the future of Bubby’s Jewish Soul Food.
“It’s hard because we put so much love and blood and sweat and tears into this place and made it into a place we really wanted people to enjoy being,” Nuttall said. “At least, hopefully, our food will be able to be enjoyed by people going forward.”