Civetta Italian Kitchen + Bar, the StoneCrest restaurant owned by Urban Food Group, has closed its doors. The restaurant opened in 2018, and according to owner Kevin Jennings, couldn’t weather the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the group’s other restaurants rebounded, Civetta didn’t bring back enough diners to remain in business.

“We’re checking everything on these restaurants: the reservations, our reputation, how is the review, looking at the food, trying to make sure we don’t raise prices — all those kinds of things,” Jennings says. “Civetta was doing about $35,000 a week before Covid and we were doing great, we were happy. We’d finally gotten the food where we wanted it. We had the staff. Things were going well and we were becoming this southern Charlotte neighborhood restaurant over in StoneCrest with a good reputation that was coming around. Covid hit, and we’ve just never come back.”

The restaurant’s highest week post-pandemic has been under $20,000, Jennings says, meaning they’ve been losing money since. On top of that, rent deferred during the shutdown is now due — rent that totals more than $40,000. The restaurant’s assets — kitchen equipment, dining room furniture, etc. — have been sold to a new owner, who will open a restaurant in that space.

Bar Marcel, built to favor a small, intimate dining experience following Vivace’s closure, will remain open. Despite a snafu where the reservation system was unknowingly limiting reservations, the SouthPark restaurant is slowly regaining ground. Urban Food Group also owns restaurants in eastern North Carolina — another concept is in the works in Raleigh — as well as in Colorado.

“We’ve been in business 22 years in North Carolina,” Jennings says. “So by the time I’m dead, I might figure it out.”

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