Krishna Kitchen Closes Church Street Location

The lights inside the Krishna Kitchen Church Street location have remained off these past two weeks, as that branch of the innovative, vegan and Indian restaurant officially shut down production. 

Krishna Kitchen opened on Church Street in 2021 and recently celebrated its three-year anniversary in New Paltz. Now, the business has closed its Village of New Paltz location and is focusing primarily on its location inside the Truth Cafe at SUNY New Paltz. The SUNY New Paltz location will remain open.  

The closing of Krishna Kitchen on Church Street follows the recent trend of local businesses in New Paltz, such as Huckleberry, shutting down. Many of these businesses have cited increasing commercial rents as a major reason for their departure. When asked if increasing rent played a role in the closing of the location, Hari Ravel, one of the owners of Krishna Kitchen, stated that “it was definitely a factor” and that the rent and utilities “kind of add up.”  

However, Ravel stated that difficulties maintaining two separate New Paltz locations was the primary reason for the closing of the Church Street location. “We had to learn to adapt to the student palette and price point and basically making things more accessible,” Ravel said. “We felt like we had evolved here on campus, and perhaps it was a little bit more challenging for our Church Street location to adapt to the new changes.”  

Ravel prefers to look at the shutting down of the Church Street location not as a closing, but as a shifting of location. According to Ravel, the Church Street location had seen a decline in sales since the opening of the SUNY New Paltz location and ownership decided it was best to shut it down. “Being sustainable is important, and being able to see the distance is important,” Ravel said. “So, we decided to focus our efforts here on campus and let go of the Church Street location.” The SUNY New Paltz location has seen good success and Ravel wants to work on keeping that success going. “Since we’ve opened on campus,  we’ve been steadily serving hundreds of bowls, innovating, learning a lot and we’re also learning from our customers of what their needs are,” Ravel said. “We’re looking to stay here and serve the community in better ways.” 

One element of the Church Street location that Ravel enjoyed was the community element the store brought to the village. “We had a piano in there and it was a kind of community space…We put a lot of love into it,” Ravel said. He hopes that eventually the Truth Cafe can reflect that same feeling of community and love that existed at the restaurant on Church Street. Ravel hopes they “can bring some of that love here on campus and carry the mission forward of making good food accessible to a wide audience.” 

“I used to be a performing arts producer before I opened Krishna Kitchen. And some of our other founders, they’re musicians and things like that. So the arts are quite close to us,” Ravel said. “We’d be really happy and open to facilitating any expression of the arts. Whether it be music or art, or on-campus groups…We’d be happy to fill them with some chai.”