Pastry chef Romina Rasmussen says she will never know the full scope of why her bao shop had to close.
One reason she does know for certain is that Xiao Bao Bao’s sales plateaued last summer and never improved, Rasmussen said. There were rising labor costs and food costs at the same time.
The rest is speculation. Maybe people were too unfamiliar with the Chinese steamed buns with fillings, which Rasmussen came to love when she was living in Asia during most of her 20s. Or maybe they didn’t know what time of day to eat them.
“Maybe bao just wasn’t it,” Rasmussen said.
But she does know she wasn’t alone in having to shutter her shop in June. Several other restaurants closed that month, with some sharing reasons for the closures and some not.
At this point, foodies and fans of going out to eat are wondering: Why are so many restaurants — some giants in the Utah food scene — closing?
Why are restaurants closing?
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Beehive Beastro on State Street, on Wednesday, July 2, 2025.
Get Utah Eats newsletter. Every Wednesday, we bring you what you need to know about Utah’s bar and restaurant scene.
In June, vegan coffee shop Mark of the Beastro announced that its monthslong closure would be permanent.
That was followed by the closures of Yoko Ramen and Sugar House bar Craft by Proper, plus downtown Italian restaurant Cucina Toscana.
In a gut punch, the downtown location of Market Street Grill & Oyster Bar shuttered after almost 50 years in business.
In a news release, Market Street Grill said the economic “realities” of operating in downtown Salt Lake City had been “increasingly challenging.”
“Reduced office occupancy, changing consumer patterns, and lower levels of foot traffic have created headwinds that have made it difficult for the location to operate sustainably,” the release said.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) The New York Building is seen in Salt Lake City on Monday, April 14, 2025.
In a statement, the Utah Restaurant Association said that while every closure “has its own story, restaurants continue to face significant challenges from labor shortages, changing consumer habits due to inflation, rising operating costs, and changing dynamics in our [capital] city.”
A contributing factor for Xiao Bao Bao was that labor was expensive, Rasmussen said. At the tip-free bao shop, she paid her workers $18 an hour. When Xiao Bao Bao opened a second location in the Milk Block development, those costs doubled.
People were sometimes “horrified” when they heard the price of a bao was $4 to $4.50, Rasmussen said, but “that’s not just paying for the bao, it’s paying for the rent and the person making [the bao] and the person giving it to you, and there’s no tip line anywhere on our tablet.”
Plus, food costs are skyrocketing, which was especially relevant for Xiao Bao Bao, which used heritage breed pork and organic chicken in its bao, Rasmussen said.
For downtown restaurants, construction, transportation changes and reduced parking “have added another layer of challenge,” the association continued in its statement.
Rasmussen, who also owns the chocolate shop and bakery Chez Nibs, which is still open two doors down from Xiao Bao Bao, said parking costs factor in when trying to attract customers.
The minimum that drivers can pay with a card on Salt Lake City’s parking meters is $3.50 for one hour, which means running into Chez Nibs to grab a kouign-amann (Rasmussen’s signature pastry) for $6.50 would cost $10 total.
“That’s a big chunk of money just to run into a store,” Rasmussen said.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Romina Rasmussen steams Chinese buns at Xiao Bao Bao on Feb. 10, 2023.
The fact that people no longer get two free hours of parking in Salt Lake City on Saturdays has impacted her businesses, too. “Saturdays used to be much busier,” Rasmussen said.
The corner where Chez Nibs and the shuttered Xiao Bao Bao are located, across the street from the Main Library and the closed Leonardo museum, used to get a lot more foot traffic, said Rasmussen. She’s been doing business on that corner since 2007, when she opened her bakery Les Madeleines, which eventually became Xiao Bao Bao.
The corner is also home to Baby’s Bagels/Pie Boy Pizza, Big Dipper Sandwiches, Krua Thai Restaurant and Fountain Records, which has Sound Brew coffee shop inside. But Rasmussen has been there the longest, starting with Les Madeleines.
During weekends when festivals like Living Traditions and the Utah Pride Festival are held at Library Square and Washington Square, Rasmussen said the corner always sees a drop in business.
She said that people don’t go to festivals to also patronize businesses around the festival. Instead, they seem to attend the festival and spend money only on the festival grounds.
Having the Downtown Winter Farmers Market at The Leonardo was great for business, Rasmussen said, and shoppers would often leave the market and then walk across the street to visit the nearby shops. (This year, the market will be returning to The Leonardo, now called City Hall East.)
The busiest years for Les Madeleines were 2010 to about 2018, Rasmussen said. “There were always lots of people in here, she said. ”But people were working in the office, people were coming downtown.”
A swinging ‘pendulum’
In March, restaurateur Matteo Sogne, who owns Matteo and Strada, predicted there was going to be “a good shake in the tree” in the local restaurant industry, where “the good apples will stay on.”
Three months later, it appears that “shake” has begun, and Sogne said it’s not over yet. In the next year, he said, “I think there will probably be a lot more places that are probably going to have a turnover, sadly.”
Rasmussen is also worried about a pendulum shift.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Customers at Xiao Bao Bao in February 2023. The restaurant closed this year as sales plateaued.
When Rasmussen moved back to Salt Lake City in 2003, after being away for about 15 years, she said it was “chain [restaurant] central,” with hardly any independent restaurants around.
In the years since, she has seen the pendulum swing the other direction, with more independent restaurants arriving on the scene, Rasmussen said. But now, she said she’s seeing the pendulum swing back, and a lot of chains are opening again.
“Hopefully there will just be enough people supporting independent restaurants that my prediction of the pendulum swinging is wrong, but it’s just how it looks at the moment,” she said.
With food costs and other expenses being so high, and customers nervous about the economy spending less when they do come in, Rasmussen said it all reminds her of 2007 and leading into 2008 and the Great Recession. She said Les Madeleines was “definitely like that in those years.”
(Rasmussen closed Les Madeleines in 2022 due to health problems.)
Now that Xiao Bao Bao has closed, Rasmussen is turning her full focus to Chez Nibs, although she said that business is also struggling a bit for some of the same reasons.
To try and get more customers in the door, Rasmussen introduced decadent soft serve ice cream at Chez Nibs in April. “Everyone who’s had it is like, ‘That’s the best soft serve in town,’” she said.
Rasmussen said she also plans to keep making the egg tarts that she sold at Xiao Bao Bao and sell them at Chez Nibs.
Despite how things turned out at Xiao Bao Bao, Rasmussen said, “I’ll always be glad that I did [it], even if it didn’t quite turn out to be the way that I wanted it to. … I am proud of what we did.”
sltrib.com is now free to access — no subscription required. We made this decision because we believe access to trustworthy, independent news shouldn’t depend on what you can afford — especially as misinformation and AI-generated content continue to rise.
Free to read doesn’t mean free to produce. Our reporters show up every day to ask hard questions and hold powerful institutions to account. That work takes resources. As a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on support from people who believe it matters. Make a donation today to fund local news that serves Utah communities.
You can help us bring more local news to more communities today.
Dining and Cooking