WESTBROOK – The French Press Eatery – a coffee shop turned restaurant that in just nine months had become a popular gathering spot in downtown Westbrook – has closed its doors.

The closing of the restaurant at 855 Main St. on Saturday surprised many in the community because the eatery had just added a bar and expanded its hours and menu. In fact, there had been a big celebratory “opening night” party at the restaurant just three days before it shut down.

The primary reason for the closing is financial, according to James Tranchemontagne, a chef who is co-owner of the French Press and the Frog & Turtle restaurant around the corner from it.

“We’re just out of money,” Tranchemontagne said Tuesday. “It’s pretty much a black-and-white issue.”

The French Press is up for sale, said Tranchemontagne, who owns the businesses with his wife, Heidi, and his brother, Andre. The 55-seat restaurant is listed on Craigslist for $92,000.

However, Tranchemontagne added, they also are holding out hope that an investor will agree to partner with them to re-open the French Press.

“We still remain very optimistic,” he said.

The Frog & Turtle, Tranchemontagne’s signature restaurant that opened three years ago on Bridge Street, is run as a separate business and is not impacted by the closing, he said. That popular gastro pub will continue with its usual hours and offerings, he said.

The French Press, managed by Andre Tranchemontagne, opened last fall as a coffee shop serving breakfast and lunch. The location was formerly home to Freaky Bean coffee shop, which also closed abruptly, in February 2009.

Known for its homemade doughnuts, the French Press was in the news last month for having just added dinner offerings and a full service bar.

It just started serving dinner five weeks ago, on July 21. And on Wednesday, Aug. 11, there was a big party at the eatery to celebrate the new bar and dinner menu and its new chef, Jeremy Donovan.

Breakfast and lunch were served on Saturday, Aug. 14. But that afternoon, this announcement appeared on the restaurant’s Facebook page:

“Thank you for giving the French Press Eatery a wonderful nine months. It has been a journey like no other. Sadly, at this time, we are closing the doors indefinitely due to circumstances beyond our control. All of us have enjoyed our time here and we hope to see you our new friends at the Frog and Turtle.”

Comments on the site made it clear that customers were stunned.

The remarks included “nononononooooooo! so sad,” “Holy Hell, this is horrible news!,” and “Wha?! Why? No! I love you guys! I’ve eaten there 3 times this week…what am I going to do now?”

Rumors started that someone in the family had been in an accident or seriously ill, and the family had to write an assurance on the Facebook site this week that everyone was healthy.

The news also startled others in the community.

“It was certainly surprising coming on the heels of what was their grand re-opening on Wednesday,” said Keith Luke, director of economic and community development for the city, who learned of the closing in an e-mail from Tranchemontagne last Friday. “I thought of it as successful. It certainly seemed that they had all the tools in place to make a go of it.”

Luke said he hopes the city will be able to work with the Tranchemontagnes “to promote the opportunities available at the French Press or its future iteration.”

Michelle Flaherty Philbrook, president of the Westbrook Community Chamber, reacted in a similar fashion to learning the news earlier this week.

“That is so surprising,” she said. “It certainly was a great asset down there. I hope it will get up and running in some form.”

On Tuesday, Tranchemontagne said that there are “a lot of factors” that contributed to the closing, but said the main one was financial.

The business was costing more than it was bringing in so they had to shut it down before they got too deeply in debt to recover, he said.

“Sometimes people hold on to their dream so much they can’t let go of it and it ends up costing them everything,” Tranchemontagne said.

According to the Facebook site, adding the bar and other restoration expenses “just cost more than we budgeted.”

Tranchemontagne also cited a combination of other factors. One was a seven-week delay in getting a permit from the city to do restoration work in the 3,000-square foot space, he said.

Tranchemontagne and his landlord, T & T Development LLC, were in a dispute with the city on whether the restoration work would require the addition of a more extensive – and more expensive – fire-protection system than the restaurant already had. The issue was resolved in the eatery’s favor, but Tranchemontagne said the time delay held him back from building an outdoor courtyard this summer that might have helped to attract more customers when business was slow in the early summer.

Tranchemontagne had hoped the courtyard would entice people using the River Walk trail in Riverbank Park to dine at the eatery.

“June and July is a slow time out there and we were banking on having outside seating,” Tranchemontagne said.

He said the permit delay was “not the whole reason” for the closing. “There’s a lot of factors, but it definitely took its shot,” Tranchemontagne said.

He also said that the slow economy was a factor and that the eatery lost revenue because some of its daytime customers dropped off while the renovations were going on.

Then, he said, when the eatery expanded its hours to the evening in July, fewer customers than expected showed up to eat dinner and drink at the bar.

“I really thought people would check out the nights. I really did,” Tranchemontagne said.

He said that he realizes now the eatery should have advertised more instead of relaying on social media to get the word out it that it was open in the evening.

The new diner, which emphasized classic diner fare and had lower prices than the Frog & Turtle, was designed not to overlap with that bistro pub, Tranchemontagne said.

“We were very, very careful to make sure they weren’t necessarily competing with each other,” he said.

The French Press changed chefs along with its menu in the past month. Chef Joe Kenney left and Donovan took over. Tranchemontagne, who said Donovan now will do some cooking at the Frog & Turtle, said the change in chefs had nothing to do with the closing. He said Kenney “just went a different way.”

Tranchemontagne said the family has been looking for an investor for the past six or seven weeks, while in the process of expanding the French Press’ hours and menu.

He said they realized that “the demands of running both places and doing it extremely well – the reality of that is you can’t do it all yourself and that it’s time to look for someone to help you.”

They had some responses from potential investors but with the summer vacation season underway, Tranchemontagne said, “it’s just hard to get someone to sit down and talk to you.”

When asked why they held a celebratory opening night party just three days before the French Press closed, Tranchemontagne said, “It’s definitely weird, there’s no doubt about it.”

He said, “We talked about having it as a ‘thank you’ party and a closing party and maybe we should have done it that way.”

However, he said that even at that late date, “I still was optimistic that investors would come in and stuff.”

The family also talked about continuing to operate the restaurant while putting it up for sale, but in the end decided it would be easier to show it if the business closed, he said. “We just wanted to try to simplify it,” Tranchemontagne said.

He said that now is a better time to sell a restaurant than in the winter.

Tranchemontagne actually leases the French Press site from the building’s owner, T & T Development, so it would the restaurant’s fixtures and equipment that he actually would be selling.

Joyce Talbot, manager of T & T, said the Tranchemontagnes still have a lease for several years on the site. “We as the owners of the business will completely support whatever decision James makes,” Talbot said. “He is a wonderful, wonderful businessman and entrepreneur.”

Tranchemontagne said he would welcome another restaurant at the French Press location and not consider it a threat to the Frog & Turtle. “The more restaurants that come to Westbrook, the more people come to Westbrook,” he said.

He said that in working to turn Westbrook’s downtown into a dining destination for city residents and people from other communities, the family has spent about $300,000 in personal savings and loans on the Frog & Turtle and the French Press in the past three years.

The French Press is the second popular Westbrook eatery to close this summer.

Last month, Thankgiving’s Bakery and Eatery at 9 Cumberland Street shut its doors after four years of serving up rotisserie turkey and baked goods. Owner Jack Piattoni cited the restaurant’s location on a busy intersection as one factor in the closing, saying customers either avoided the area or rushed through without stopping.