Nosh Taco in Portland’s Canal Plaza closed earlier this month, not quite a year after it launched in the former Copper Branch vegan restaurant space.

Tacos from Nosh Taco in Portland’s Canal Plaza. The restaurant has announced it is closing. Tim Cebula/Staff Writer

Co-owner Michael Fraser said the taqueria wasn’t able to generate enough revenue to keep it afloat, particularly after the project quickly became more costly than the owners had expected.

“We ran into opening costs that were more than double what we thought they would be when we signed the lease,” Fraser said. “Because of that, we weren’t able to get as much money as we wanted into the design of the space, so it didn’t quite have the feel we wanted.”

Fraser said rent for the 1,300-square-foot downtown Portland space was steep, adding that limited downtown foot traffic – an issue for many businesses since the pandemic – was another factor behind the closure.

“We knew in July that we weren’t even close to where we wanted to be in the numbers. There just wasn’t enough traffic there,” Fraser said. “We thought we were going to be doing probably three times the amount of business we actually did. (The location) has a lot of visibility, but for some reason, it doesn’t draw as much as we’d hoped.”

Fraser’s team tried to keep its prices down to attract business. “We had $5 tacos,” he said. “You could grab two tacos and a soda at lunch, and it’d be $12.”

Nosh Taco’s lunch crowd was often “pretty decent,” Fraser said, “but we had almost zero dinner business.

“In the end, we just ran out of money,” he added. “Didn’t have the cash flow it takes sometimes to keep businesses open the first couple of years.”

Fraser and his partners, Michael Barbuto and Kevin Doyle, also co-own Nosh Kitchen Bar and CBG.