Why do restaurants close? Sometimes, the owner is tired and ‘it’s time.’

Even in the best times, running a food business is a daily slog of managing costs, staff, customers’ expectations, and countless other issues. Four years after the upheaval of the pandemic, many owners — especially the hands-on operators of small businesses — still feel like they can’t catch a break. The prices for food, utilities, and labor have soared. Competition from newcomers is keen. Operating hours are down. While many businesses have rebounded from the two hardest years of the pandemic, others have not.

This week, the owners of two very different Philadelphia restaurateurs announced their closings.

The chief reason: They are tired.

“I feel like restaurants are only now digesting what they went through during COVID,” said Mallory Fix-Lopez, who on Friday announced that July 7 would be the last day for On Point Bistro, the restaurant that she and her chef-husband, Juan Lopez, opened in 2016 in Point Breeze.

“We’re tired, even though I don’t want to look at it that way,” Fix-Lopez said. “For us, I guess the story is largely like, ‘Our time has come.’”

“I’m tired,” said chef Peter Woolsey, who said he would close Bistrot La Minette, his bistro in Queen Village, on July 31 after nearly 16 years. “I just felt like it’s time.”

This is becoming a common refrain. One of the siblings behind the longtime Rilling’s Bakery in Bucks County, which closed several months ago, told The Inquirer: “Life’s too short to be stressed out.” The owner of the comparatively new Home Cuban Cafe in Old City, running it after her partner quit, cited burnout when she shut down last month.

Mallory Fix-Lopez said she saw Bistrot La Minette’s closing notice and thought, “That’s exactly where we’re at. It’s time to make a change. It’s time to simplify things. Running a restaurant is exhausting.”

The couple — she is 39, he is 42 — met years ago at Garces Trading Co., where she worked in the front of the house and he was a chef. In 2016, having long heard her husband express the desire to be his own boss, she urged him to do something about it. They looked around their Point Breeze neighborhood and found the former Breezy’s Cafe across from the Ladder 24 firehouse and 17th Police District.

On Point has charm from the wooden chairs and tables, flower-topped sconces, and photos of their families and the neighborhood. At their opening that September, they served brunch and dinner to an audience that had grown under recent development.

“We are more than just a restaurant,” said Fix-Lopez, a career educator who resigned recently from the School Board of Philadelphia. “We really did believe in working to uplift community and we were very involved with using our business to support schools. We hosted interns from the school district, did fund-raisers. I do think we have a good reputation of being a good community partner.”

Then came the pandemic. On Point pivoted from indoor service to delivering hundreds of meals a day to Penn Medicine. “That’s how we stayed afloat,” she said. The restaurant eliminated dinner then and “we never had the energy to bring it back,” she said. “I think it’s still just kind of an unknown. If we did [bring it back], it would be another pivot then, retraining staff.”

She said they were proud to have kept all 12 employees working during the pandemic, aided by $132,000 in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans.

On Point has been a scratch kitchen, making Lopez dependent on fresh ingredients such as eggs for omelets and even his hollandaise. The fluctuating price of eggs, however, sent the couple into a tizzy last year.

Since deciding to close, Fix-Lopez said she and Lopez were working their networks to refer employees to new jobs. She wanted her neighbors to support them in their last few weeks; not only will On Point be gone, but so has the OCF Coffee House across the street.

The couple will make the furnished and equipped space available for a new restaurateur. “It’s going to be a heck of a lot easier for a start-up than we had it,” she said.

“A kitchen will put some abuse on you,” said Peter Woolsey, 46, who was a 30-year-old Le Cordon Bleu-trained veteran of such top kitchens as Lucas Carton in Paris and Striped Bass in Philadelphia when he and his father, John, bought their building on Sixth Street just off Bainbridge.

They spent 17 months rehabbing it into Bistrot La Minette — slang for “babe.” Woolsey’s French-born wife, Peggy, decorated the 100-seater with antique furniture and knickknacks from Burgundian flea markets. At its opening in late 2008, the neighborhood had a genuine French bistro. Reviews were excellent, and Francophiles flocked for the mustard-braised rabbit, trout meunière, and oeuf du pêcheur.

The pandemic ruined everything. First, it shuttered the dining room and forced Woolsey to offer carryout — not the most suitable medium for his food. Records indicate that the restaurant received about $375,000 in two forgivable PPP loans, all of which went to staff salaries.

Second, the pandemic also crushed business at a French restaurant, Gabi, that Woolsey and partners had opened in late 2019 on North Broad Street; with no traction, it closed in late 2022. Third, Woolsey’s contract to operate La Peg, his restaurant at the FringeArts headquarters on Columbus Boulevard, ran out in 2020.

The notion of closing Bistrot La Minette — his original restaurant — had been on the table for about a year, he said.

“I had a protein cook who ghosted me on the first day of restaurant week last September and I took over his station,” Woolsey said. “Besides being the chef and owner and all that, I’ve also been running a station for a whole year — all the prep and all the stuff that goes along with that.”

Woolsey published his decision on Instagram. He thanked his wife, his workers past and present, and he implored customers to “join us for another slice of France and another meal or two.”

Woolsey said he is helping his 15 employees — down from 25 at the peak — find what he calls “a good transition” to a new job. The restaurant, a condo building, is on the market.

He said everyone is asking him what he will do next. “I only really know one thing,” he said. “I know how to cook and I know restaurants.”