Sadly, we at Bella G’s have made the painful decision that as of July 12, we will be permanently closing our retail business.
 

We did not make this decision lightly; there are a number of factors which led us to this conclusion.

First and foremost was our health.  As our loyal customers know, we have all had a number of physical ailments, and unfortunately these conditions, which left us at times unable to physically function, are only getting worse.  We have discussed these with a number of people and even our landlord’s son has said to us on a number of occasions that, 'If we are in such bad shape that we should get out.'  Although it upsets us greatly, we have to admit to ourselves that we are now at that point.

The next factor in our decision has been the economy.  We have had our loyal customers for whom we are extremely grateful, but unfortunately we did not get the continued support we needed to keep a retail operation going.

And the final factor which was the one that pretty much made our decision for us was the water at this location.  This site is serviced not by city water, but with a well.  Approximately 3 weeks ago we were notified that the water had shown fecal coliform bacteria in the quarterly test, and we were told no longer to use it for cooking until the problem was taken care of.  A week later we were told that the first subsequent test had also shown coliform bacteria in the sample; another week and another water test later, we still had not been notified by our landlord whether or not the water had passed the test and was therefore now safe to use for food preparation, drinking, and washing dishes.  Since the vast majority of our products were cooked right here that effectively took away our ability to provide the freshly-prepared foods which made up our ‘bread & butter’.  We had used bottled spring water for cooking and cleaning in the short time between when we received this notice and before we went on our vacation, but sadly it was not economically viable to continue to do so indefinitely.

Thank you again to all of our loyal customers, and we wish you all well.