Local food and beverage businesses weigh in on challenges and opportunities in our coastal community

Whether it’s possible to be “viable in Ventura” is a question on the minds of many of the city’s food and beverage business owners. But alliteration makes everything sound jaunty, so “viable in Ventura” immediately makes me think of Sleepless in Seattle—only this time the love story isn’t between characters played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Our beachside town is caught in a more complicated triangle between local businesses, local government and the community. We all seem to want the same things—a thriving commercial district that doubles as community space—but we can’t seem to agree on how to get there sustainably.

Downtown Ventura has lately been the locus of this question, specifically over the fate of Main Street Moves, the city’s program that has managed the closure of Main Street—between Figueroa and Fir streets, and California Street between Main and Santa Clara streets—to vehicle traffic since 2020. What began as a three-month closure to help businesses weather COVID has, in the words of Alessandro Tromba, owner of Immigrant Son Caffè, started to feel like “Gilligan’s Island.” As he told KEYT News: “They said it was supposed to be a three-hour tour and here we are five and a half years later.”

Last September, the City Council voted to maintain the closure, but at their April 14, 2026, meeting a group of Downtown business owners showed up to present a petition to reverse course and reopen Main Street immediately. Among the 63 signatories were 25 restaurants.

The meeting turned contentious when a vote on whether to even schedule a discussion about the status of Main Street Moves was narrowly defeated 4-3, with the item ultimately deferred to a November 2026 agenda slot. Just prior, the council had voted unanimously to advance Agenda Item 20—a municipal code update laying the groundwork for expanded paid parking, including new pay-by-plate meters arriving in early summer 2026.

Full expansion of paid parking is targeted for winter 2026/2027, and business owners across the city are watching nervously, not least because many details remain unclear.

When I spoke with a handful of food and beverage businesses around Ventura this spring, the lack of clarity and commitment around the plans for Downtown was a recurring source of frustration. Tina Thayer, co-owner of Main Street stalwart Paradise Pantry, remains in favor of the closure with the direction the council laid out in September, but she is critical of the city’s pace and indecision in realizing a long-term vision. “We should have been two years ahead of where we are,” she tells me.

Brandon Ristaino, managing member of Good Lion Hospitality— of which Cocktail Trust and Strange Beast on Main Street, as well as Jaguar Moon just off it, are a part—draws on his regional experience operating businesses in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo to assess what’s happening in Ventura. His take is that Los Angeles, which he says provides roughly half of both Ventura’s and Santa Barbara’s tourism, is hurting—pointing to last year’s fires, this year’s immigration enforcement climate, the challenging regulatory environment and the entertainment industry’s prolonged malaise. That, in turn, is hurting his bottom line. Ristaino would favor a weekend-only pedestrian model with heavy entertainment programming for Main Street during closures, having seen a version of it work firsthand in San Luis Obispo, where streets close for the Thursday Farmers Market.

Derek Ulrich, who co-owns Prospect Coffee Roasters on Laurel Street and Model Citizen, one block south of Main Street, signed the lease for the latter just a few months before COVID, when Main Street was still open to traffic. In the four years their doors have been open, the street has been closed. It “feels a little bit like a material change to the terms that we agreed to,” he tells me. “If I was doing it over right now, I would not do it Downtown.”

Where Ulrich would have done it, he goes on to tell me, is Front Street or Midtown. This raises the question of whether the travails of Downtown might partly reflect a greater selection of food and drink options elsewhere in the city. Just the week before I began this reporting, SF Gate ran a piece touting Ventura as a “dining hub,” featuring businesses like Buena Bodega, Luke’s on Main and Buddy’s Wine Bar in Midtown; Singing Sun Coffee in Midtown and on the Avenue; Mothers Tacos and Room Service Coffee in the GasWorks complex on Thompson near Front Street; as well as Model Citizen, Jaguar Moon, Corazon Cocina, and Pinyon Downtown.

The answer I got universally was no: the emergence of hospitality hubs around town has not been cannibalistic. There is a pervasive belief in the “rising tide lifts all ships” principle, and a genuine sense of camaraderie and pride over what Ventura’s food and drink community has collectively built. Alexis Wade, proprietor of Buddy’s Wine Bar, tells me she’s glad I asked, because she wants to make clear that Midtown, often held up as a success story, is not immune to the current economic climate.

“It’s not a Downtown issue. It’s a Ventura issue,” she says. “The great new businesses bringing fresh energy to the neighborhood are exciting and worth celebrating, while also recognizing that we all experience the same ebbs and flows in traffic that people talk about feeling Downtown.”

Joel and Charne Huff, the husband-and-wife team behind Frontside Cafe, are notably more optimistic than their Downtown counterparts. They attribute their resilience during the economic downturn to being primarily a breakfast spot—a more accessible price point when household budgets are tight—and to their proximity to the beach, which draws a surf-tourism crowd that other neighborhoods don’t see. They suspect they are incidental beneficiaries of the Main Street closure, yet Joel is a vociferous advocate for reopening it. “I’ve been here five generations, and I think it’s stupid what they’ve done.”

Gabrielle Moes, owner and president of Seasons Catering, bucked the trend of businesses closing Downtown by opening an event space, Palomino, just off Main Street in March. She recognizes that the economics of her business are different—built more on intentional bookings rather than serendipitous foot traffic—but she also sees her venue as a contributor to the Downtown ecosystem. Her events, she explains, are “basically encouraging large counts of people to come to one space,” and that ripples outward: after-parties at nearby bars, hotel stays, meals the following day. She’s also hosting community events, like line dancing and dinner on the patio, that she hopes will draw people to other Downtown businesses.

This sense of community runs through every conversation I had. While several owners suggested ways the city might boost tourism— particularly by encouraging the development of more hotels—there was also genuine appreciation for what makes Ventura distinct: the fact that it hasn’t been overrun. Wade puts it plainly: “What I love about Ventura is that on the weekends, our town still feels like it belongs to the people of Ventura. Ventura has its own rhythm, which feels grounded in the local community.”

That leaves the future of the scene largely up to the community itself. When asked how residents can help, Wade is direct: “Take a little extra effort to make that drop in, or to recommend it to a friend— because especially right now, at this specific economic time, it’s going to be the difference between maybe a business you love closing their doors or staying open another month.”

I’ve never found eating and drinking in Ventura more interesting than I do right now, which is the great paradox of this moment. It’s time, literally, to put our money where our mouths are.