ROCHESTER — Ask business owners how things are in downtown Rochester today and you’ll get a wide variety of answers, but you might not hear the word “vibrant.” However, most working downtown do say that business in the city’s core today is better compared to 2023. “Things are good now, but it's a different mix now," said Travis Yager , who manages the 16-year-old Chocolaterie Stam in the Galleria at University Square mall.
"We learned to survive through the changes. Coming out of it (the pandemic), we realized about 20% of our business was gone. Mayo Clinic sent all those employees home .
Now we're getting back our main customer, which is the Mayo Clinic patient and their families and then much of the Civic Center event traffic came back. ADVERTISEMENT “This is our first year since all of that started that we have been fully staffed. We have all 13 jobs filled.
” Andrew Meissner , co-owner of Bravo Espresso in the Galleria, said his days and weeks were very predictable before the pandemic. “I knew how business would be day-to-day, every day of the week. I could tell you the customer traffic from hour-to-hour,” he remembered.
After serving coffee and pastries to a surprise surge of Tuesday morning customers for 90 minutes, Meissner described today’s downtown as unpredictable as the ocean. “Some days the tide is high and then the next day is calm. .
.. There's no structure to our days or weeks anymore.
We always had the same rush times before. Now it's all.
