Columbia Heights' gigantic bar-meets-coffeehouse-meets-restaurant, The Coupe, announced a major operational change this week: it will no longer be open 24 hours.
Manager Maxwell Hessman tells us after a year and a half of 24/7 operations, business from midnight to 6am was only accounting for 10% of total sales. The overnight schedule was tough on the staff too. So the decision was a no-brainer. The menus will remain the same and they'll still have free WiFi, but will now be open from 6am to midnight, Sunday through Thursday, and 6am to 1am, Friday through Saturday.
The Coupe isn't the first DC establishment to nix a 24/7 schedule. Restaurant-meets-concert-venue The Hamilton scrapped it within six months of opening. That said, The Coupe's sister restaurant in Adams Morgan, The Diner, has been doing steady 24-hour business for years, and Maxwell assures us The Diner's hours aren't changing. But he points out that there are 60-plus businesses in that area that feed into the late night demand, and The Coupe's neighborhood just doesn't have that. Do you think DC will ever have the demand to support more late-night businesses? Tell Alia Khan.
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