LAKELAND, Fla. — Lakeland’s first and only axe-throwing restaurant is permanently closing its doors this weekend after owners say downtown construction hurt their business.
Joyce Woodrow said each day is becoming more surreal as she takes inventory of what’s left inside her restaurant.
“I can’t believe it. I still can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s like every time I come in here to work, to meet our customers, our employees and I keep counting, ‘We only have these many days left.’ It’s very heart breaking.”
Woodrow and her husband first opened Ax-Caliber in downtown Lakeland in 2020. Over the past five years, they’ve weathered a lot — from the pandemic to a shifting economy.
But Woodrow says things didn’t start to take a real turn for the worse until a sudden drop in foot traffic going into March — just around the time Publix began preparing to renovate two buildings for its new I.T. campus.
“A lot of the employees weren’t coming in for lunch and so we had to discontinue our lunch times and opening until two in the afternoon and the evenings,” Woodrow said.
Soon after preparations started, the Cty of Lakeland shut down portions of East Orange Street and surrounding roads. Since then, Woodrow said the restaurant has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
She said they’ve done everything they can to offset the losses — including giving up half the building to the landlord, reducing staff, and cutting down the menu.
“But it’s hard to fight to continue moving forward when things are out of your control,” Woodrow said. “I mean we cannot control the street closures, we can’t control the lack for foot traffic, we can’t control the accessibility. We can only control what we’re dealing with.”
Spectrum Bay News 9 reached out to Publix and the City of Lakeland several times regarding Woodrow’s claims but has not received a response. However, Woodrow she’s not trying to place blame. Instead, she wants to shed light on the impact large companies can have on small businesses.
“A lot of these larger businesses are great to have. We need them to sustain our city, but I think the smaller ones are the ones that keep us going,” she said.
Based on the interactions between the customers and Woodrow, there is a shared feeling of disappointment that a small business has to shut its doors.
Ax-Caliber’s last day is this Saturday, July 26. Woodrow says they’ll also be hosting a “going out of business” sale on Monday and Tuesday at 9 a.m.
Alexis Jones
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