Closing Thoughts: Christopher Iosua, developer of Destare Cafe & Martini Bar, Fitchburg
Developer Christopher Iosua joined with local restaurateur Lance Dellogono to open a new martini bar and café in downtown Fitchburg in July. Destaré is located on the ground floor of the historic Dickinson building, which is also home to Iosua's Fitchburg Business Center, an incubator space for small businesses. Iosua, who has a background in finance, is also the founder of the Mortgage Connection, which has its headquarters right down the street.
What is your history in Fitchburg?
I started developing a lot of out-of-favor properties. We took a lot of drug houses, we took crack houses that were just a blight on the neighborhood, and we were able to turn these homes around.
I noticed at that point that we could transform a neighborhood by putting in an intense amount of energy in a very, very short period of time. I felt if we could do that on a small scale with some of those small buildings we could do it on a bigger scale in a very, very visible location. We felt with this kind of gateway building we could sort of change the tone for all of Main Street.
Ever worked in a restaurant or bar before?
In college I was a bartender. But that's not my area of specialization. If I've been successful to date it's been really by partnering with the best of the best I can find within the industry, and I've really done that with Destaré.
My managing partner Lance Dellogono ran Mocha Alley here in Fitchburg on Mill Street for five years.
Why a martini bar?
We knew that we were trying to provide an upscale environment. There was a tremendous amount of dinner destinations within Central Massachusetts, but from personal experience I knew that if I was looking for a full night out, there were very, very few choices here in Central Massachusetts, especially North Central Massachusetts.
The martini and wine bars have been successful for quite a long period of time. Our twist to that was to create an environment that was very common in Europe. If you go to France or you go to any place in Europe, you'll often find a younger crowd mixed in with an older crowd, some drinking wine, some drinking alcohol, some drinking coffee products, and there's a certain feel that everybody gets there. In this area you either have the Starbucks coffee shops or you have a barroom and there's really been no fusion of those two types of venues into one place.
How did you finance the operation?
Before I really began to start presenting the idea and concept of Destaré to the community, I had done probably six months worth of research to determine why there is such a high degree of restaurant and bar failures coming out of the gate. My personal research has shown me two things.
Where do your customers come from?
I would say a very high percentage of our customers are coming from Leominster and Fitchburg, but we have found that we've had customers from as far away as Athol and Gardner, to Nashua, N.H., and we had people here last weekend from Acton and Harvard.
Gin or vodka?
Both. We're not trying to be everything to all people. We've got what we consider to be the most diverse menu with 38 martinis on the menu.
What do you drink?
I tend to be vodka. One of my greatest challenges at this stage is I can't pick my favorite martini. I tend to be going back and forth between a martini we call Black Sin, which is something that came from Bangkok, Thailand, and something called the White Spotted Monkey, which I can't explain to you. You just have to try it. It's a great, great drink.
What do you think of green apple martinis?
They've been selling. They've been very, very popular at this particular stage.
So you don't think those types of martinis are blasphemous at all?
I really don't. When we first started looking at our martini menu we had people that came in here that said if you're going to be a martini bar you have to have gin martinis, and you have to have the martinis presented in this particular way, and that's it. If a person wants the correctly presented gin martini we'll have that for them, but if you'd like an appletini, we have it here as well.
The interview was conducted and edited for length by Livia Gershon.
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