Louie's $150,000 Problem

Louie’s Superette owner Chang-San Chen is desperate. So desperate, in fact, that two weeks ago he turned to The Crimson for help. When that failed, he called again the next week.

“The phone rang, and this man was on the other line,” says FM Chair Jannie S. Tsuei ’06. “He introduced himself as Louie and talked on and on and on about how he was losing business and how he was really at the end of his rope.”

After a year of depressed sales, legal troubles, and more than his fair share of bad luck, Chen fears he may be forced to close the Superette. Determined to prevent such a fate, Chen has turned to his customers for help, starting a petition, pouring his heart out to patrons, and—in moments of acute crisis—making phone calls to the press.

First, he asked for business advice. How could he win back the customers who have fled in such great numbers this year? Then, according to Tsuei, he asked for coverage.

“Last year I was covered every week,” he told Tsuei. “And now, not at all!”

Crimson headlines do have a way of winning hearts and minds (hey, it worked for Mahan-Nichols!). But it remains unclear whether a story like this one could undo the damage 2004 has brought to the Superette. It may be that, this time, Harvard’s long love affair with Louie’s really is coming to an end. Though he says business is “terrible,” Chen remains optimistic that his last-ditch efforts to salvage the business will succeed. Eighteen years of history are on his side, but this time Chen’s optimism might be unwarranted. The problem is, he seems unable to admit what’s really behind his recent troubles.

BLUE LAW BLUES

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Chen never wanted bad business. In fact, in 1993, when he first won sole ownership of the store, he didn’t want any business at all.

Chen inherited the store in 1987 when the original owner, his brother-in-law, bailed. But by 1993, he wanted out. That year, when a joint ownership arrangement that allowed Chen to keep his day job as a computer engineeer failed, he hoped to let go altogether. He and his partner each made separate bids for ownership, but his was deliberately low.

“I told my ex-wife, ‘We don’t want the store.’ So my bid was very low,” he says.

Not low enough. His former partner undercut him, leaving Chen with a store he was not very interested in owning. But, says Chen, “I had to face the fact.”

Though he has now run the show solo for 12 years, it probably looks exactly like it did during the Carter Administration. Under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights, throw-backs like an old-school beer price guide and a retro Coca-Cola refrigerator scatter the floor. Newspaper clippings yellowed with age and old photos line the wall behind the counter.

Retro clutter abounds, except lately Louie’s is missing one crucial thing: customers. 2004 was likely Chen’s worst year since buying the store. Sales dropped by about $150,000, he says—“a lot for a small store.” Chen says he doesn’t really know why, but he has a few theories.

Problems began in early 2004 after Chen was accused of selling alcohol to minors. Chen challenged that charge in court on February 25 of last year. His punishment was light: his store would be watched especially closely for a year, but if nothing went wrong, he’d be in the clear. The far more severe penalty, as Chen tells it, came at the hands of the Cambridge License Commission. On March 16, 2004, the Commission barred Louie’s from selling alcohol on Sundays for an entire year. The no-Sundays ruling came just after the repeal of Massachusetts’ blue laws, which had banned liquor sales on Sundays.

If Louie’s had never been able to sell liquor on Sundays before, why would a prohibition now hurt business? When he could not sell alcohol on Sunday, Chen reasons, “students would buy alcohol on Saturday and save it for Sunday. Now they can buy it on Sunday, so they don’t show up on Saturdays anymore.”

Chen thinks two armed robberies within a span of three months last year might also be to blame. The customers have literally been scared away.

HOLDING OUT HOPE

But Chen seems to be avoiding the giant white elephant in the Superette: IDs.

Since he was caught selling alcohol to minors, Chen says he has taken serious precautions to make sure that it never happens again. And he’s not lying—at least when FM was present. He refused to sell beer to a customer who had a Massachusetts driver’s license saying he was 23 but no backup. The man stormed away angrily with a terse “fuck you.”

“I was nice before. Then I found that that’s not the situation, so I have to change my strategy,” he says. He now keeps a stack of IDs he has confiscated—including a fake Harvard ID—behind his counter.

This speaks to what may be the real reason for Chen’s decline in sales: checking IDs is bad business. While lost Saturday-for-Sunday sales and the fear of crime both probably play a role, eliminating a huge and loyal part of your customer base—Chen estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of his customers are Harvard students—can never be good.

It’s what he’s had to do—“If I make one mistake, they’ll take away my license,” he explains—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

“I see Harvard students just like my children,” he says. And when he found out that some of them couldn’t be trusted, “that really hurt me. It hurt my feelings.” He calls himself a “victim” and says he wishes the authorities would punish the makers of fake IDs just as they punished him.

Soon, Chen will be 62. He says he has no plans for how to carry on in the event that his store does have to close. But closing the store “would be my last option,” he says. He is determined to do everything in his power to keep Louie’s in business, but, beyond a petition to reclaim his Sunday permit, he won’t say what that entails.

Louie’s has been empty on recent evenings, save for the man behind the counter. Some students are still loyal to Chen. He’s already collected 400 signatures for his petition from customers who hope that being able to sell on Sunday will save his business. He feels the same way.

“If I get the permit that allows the store to sell alcohol on Sundays, probably I think it’s going to turn back to normal,” he says. “But if I don’t get the permit…” He trails off. It’s just too painful to keep going.