JANESVILLE — Lark, a fine dining restaurant downtown, will close until March as owners revamp their menu and operations.
In a social media post, owners Richard and Joan Neeno say business never fully recovered from the pandemic and they plan to revamp their menu when they reopen in the spring.
Lark Market and the Sandwich Bar next door will reopen next week ahead of Janesville Restaurant Week.
This is the second downtown business to announce changes to their operations in recent weeks.
The Sugar Exchange announced it would be looking for a buyer after also struggling to fully recover from the pandemic.
Here’s Lark’s full message to the community:
To our Lark family,
Since we opened in 2017, so many of you have been generous with your business and support. Through gift certificate purchases in 2020, you helped us keep our doors open during some of the pandemic’s darkest times.
But the reality is that Lark never fully recovered to the business level it enjoyed in 2019. With rising food and labor costs we, like other restaurants, have struggled to achieve financial stability without raising prices beyond what we believe the local market will bear. We can no longer subsidize annual losses and unfortunately, while things improved in 2023, they were not to the level that is sustainable moving forward.
We have made the difficult but necessary decision to close Lark for the winter season. This gives us an opportunity for a refresh of our operations, menus and more. We plan to re-open in March with a calendar of events and weekday specials that we are confident will delight you. We remain committed to providing you with the highest quality food and drink. This will include expanding our wine program moving forward.
This closure means that Lark will not be participating in Janesville Restaurant Week, but Sandwich Bar and Lark Market will re-open starting next week. Sandwich Bar will be offering a lunch special for Restaurant Week. For those of you with $20 bonus certificates, they are still redeemable at Sandwich Bar and we will be extending the expiration date to the end of May for those who would prefer to use them at Lark.
We thank you again for all of your support and we look forward to a fun and exciting future for Lark.
Sincerely,
Richard and Joan Neeno