Cafe Nibbles Downscales

With the change at Nibbles Emporium comes a change at Cafe Nibbles, the upscale restaurant Suzie Stephens and her husband, Jim Hatfield, opened last year at 3274 N. Lee Ave. in Fayetteville.

Stephens has left the restaurant to concentrate on the retail business. Hatfield is serving as manager of Cafe Nibbles, which was honored last year by Arkansas Times magazine as the best new restaurant outside the Little Rock area.

Hatfield said the restaurant had been scaring customers away because they felt it was too expensive to dine there. As a result, he is cutting prices (dinner entree prices by $3 to $4 each) and offering different menu items. The expensive entrees will still be available, but there will be more of the less expensive items to choose from on the menu.

“We’re cutting the quality of our food down,” Hatfield said. “What we’re trying to do is get back to reality, and the only way we can do that is to get Suzie to stay at the other place.”

Hatfield said the restaurant was “way out of balance on the quality of food.”

“We’re trying to adapt it to the palates of Northwest Arkansas,” Hatfield said. “We misaligned it unintentionally. It was too female-oriented at noon [with nine salads on the menu] and too male-oriented at night [offering too many steaks].”

Hatfield said he will offer four salads during lunch and will cut down on the size and price of those.

Entree prices now at Cafe Nibbles will be $5-$12 for lunch and $12-$30 for dinner.

In a cost-cutting effort, Hatfield said the tablecloths may go. The restaurant has been spending $1,300 a month just to launder them.