Pittsburgh’s vegan restaurant scene is losing another major player: Reed & Co. in Lawrenceville will serve its last plant-based meals Friday.
Just in the last month or so, several veggie-first restaurants have announced closures. B52, also on Butler Street, and the South Side’s Viridis have shuttered, and Bitter Ends in Bloomfield is slated to wrap Wednesday.
For Reed & Co., which opened in 2016, the decision boils down finances, owner Reed Putlitz said. “Things got really expensive. The costs were just out of control.”
Some of those costs had to do with the well-reported increase in food prices, but that wasn’t all.
“The costs of operating a business rose across the board — not just food, but everything,” Putlitz noted.
Add to that unexpected costs, such as a plumbing repair that necessitated closing for six days this winter, he said, and the cumulative result was just too difficult to overcome.
Rent was not among the major financial stressors, which could be assumed in a burgeoning neighborhood such as Lawrenceville.
“We signed the lease a long time ago. We have excellent rent. Our cost of doing business in this neighborhood is nothing compared to a lot of peoples’.”
All of this is not to say that Reed & Co. wasn’t drawing customers. Any Lawrenceville local passing the restaurant at 4113 Butler St. in recent years would have noticed the queue of patrons outside the pandemic-installed takeout window. That allowed Putlitz and his seven employees to continue serving its Impossible burgers, popular breakfast wraps, juices and other health-minded fare throughout the worst of the coronavirus.
Putlitz even added another kitchen, where the back dining room had been, to keep up with orders.
After decisions are made, there is, of course, hindsight — “Should we have always had the dining room in the front? Probably,” Putliz said — but in this case, there are no regrets.
“You make choices as you go, and then you reflect on them. I would not have changed a thing, 100%,” he said. “I would rather have done it like this, for 5½ years, than done some other version that wasn’t me, that wasn’t us, for 10, 15 years, forever.”
That included, he said, not laying off any employees during the pandemic. To assist them with the transition after the April 22 closing, Putlitz has set up a Go Fund Me campaign.
Next steps aren’t quite in focus yet — “I need to digest what we’ve done here the past 5½ years” — but his self-proclaimed love of books “leads me to want to start working on a book. I don’t know what that means. I really want to archive this time. So we’ll see. Watch the Instagram. Watch the website. It will evolve, as I always have.”
True words: Putlitz moved to Pittsburgh in 2016 from New York City, with his wife (and Washington, Pa., native) Angela Romano. He worked for the designer Marc Jacobs for about 12 years, and it was there he fell for vegan cuisine.
“I started eating a bunch of vegan food, and drinking a bunch of juice, in the office, and I loved it.”
After opening Reed & Co., “our biggest challenge was almost kind of validating this place.” Flashforward to April 2022, and it seems to him that there are fewer vegan spots than when he opened. "Gosh, what a week, in Pittsburgh. It’s a limited customer base. It’s a certain food culture.”
As Putlitz walked into his restaurant this sunny Wednesday morning, a customer stopped him and said, “You will be missed,” followed by a fist bump.
Reed & Co.: 4113 Butler St., Lawrenceville; reedandcopgh.com
Polly Higgins: phiggins@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1960, Twitter @higginspolly, IG @pollyhig.
First Published: April 20, 2022, 8:59 p.m.
Updated: April 21, 2022, 11:02 a.m.