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Tribella Bar and Grill in Batavia to close its doors Sunday

After 26 years of being in business, Tribella Bar and Grill in Batavia will be taking its last orders on Sunday.

The Italian American bistro, located at 1900 Mill St., will be open starting at 4 p.m. Sunday. There will be seating from 4 to 8 p.m.

Like other businesses, Tribella was hit hard by the pandemic.

"The business never recovered after COVID," said Christine DiGuglielmo, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband, Joe. "Times have changed. We're a nice sit-down restaurant, and that's kind of gone away. People are more fast-paced. You can't survive with a 6,000-square-foot sit-down nice restaurant on only to-go orders. We lost so much money. And the cost of everything has gone up, and business never came back."

Tribella first opened its doors in 1997. The couple in June 2007 purchased the restaurant from its original owners.

"Restaurants were a lot bigger back then," she said. "It's just too big of an overhead for what we were taking in. You're looking at trying to run a business for three years and taking in less than you need to take in for basic bills every month."

The restaurant has seating for 200 people.

"We couldn't make it out of COVID," Christine DiGuglielmo said. "We tried as hard as we could."

The restaurant also has seen a drop in business since the closure of the Randall 15 IMAX movie theater after its parent company, Michigan-based Goodrich Quality Theaters, filed for bankruptcy in March 2020. Emagine Entertainment purchased the theater and is now renovating it.

"The movie theater brought in a lot of early and late business," Christine DiGuglielmo said. "People would come to the restaurant before and after seeing a movie."

The Sugar Grove couple is sad about the restaurant's closing.

"Our whole focus has always been on the quality of the food and good service," she said. "The servers that I have, I have one girl that's been there for 21 years. She's been there five years longer than us. And her sister has worked there for a good probably six or seven years. And I have my guys in the kitchen that have been with me for like 14 years. And they work hard. For being short-staffed, we still get compliments on our food, and we still get compliments on our service."

The couple is going to miss being part of the community.

"They're so many people that have grown up here," she said. "There's not a lot of restaurants that last that long. We are sad, but sometimes things run their course."

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