Two years ago, Emily Bielagus and Mara Herbkersman opened up the Ruby Fruit, a wine bar and restaurant. It was Los Angeles’ first lesbian bar in six years, after the last one closed in 2017. Right now, there are only 34 lesbian bars across the United States, including the Ruby Fruit, according to the Lesbian Bar Project. That’s down from about 200 lesbian bars in the 1980s.
In 2023, “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Bielagus and Herbkersman about how they decided to open the Ruby Fruit together, why there are so few lesbian bars, and the struggle to obtain capital as women starting their business. As a result, they opened with no reserves.
About a month ago, they announced on Instagram that “operating The Ruby Fruit is no longer possible due to financial impact from the current natural disaster.” But Bielagus and Herbkersman hope this is a “pause,” not a permanent closure, as they told Ryssdal when he visited the Ruby Fruit last week. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kai Ryssdal: How did you come to the decision to pause? The way I read the post on social was the fires were a bad thing that happened, but it had been sort of a series of events.
Emily Bielagus: Yeah, you know, when you lose a week of sales, which we did because of the fires, there was no money coming in. And for us, because we have no reserves. I mean, when no money comes in, you don’t have any money.
Mara Herbkersman: And things started to get tricky for us when the Hollywood strikes were an issue in LA, and that was the first moment that we were starting to see issues, fall 2023. And our first year, we were really fortunate, and we kind of rode the wave of opening excitement. And the money that we made our first year, we were able to pay off the business, which was very graciously funded by the previous owners. But paying that off coincided with the strikes happening, and we saw slow down in restaurants all over Los Angeles. This wasn’t a Ruby Fruit problem. This was a Los Angeles restaurant economy problem.
Ryssdal: Before any of this happened, between the strikes and the fires, how were you guys doing? I don’t come down here a lot, but when I drive by during your business hours, it seems pretty crowded.
Herbkersman: Yeah, I mean overall it was really great. We have a really amazing community following, and we are really fortunate to have a very dedicated clientele.
Bielagus: But again, I think it’s hard to overstate just how dependent we are on every single dollar that every single person who comes in here spends. And some days our sales are truly down to the dollar in order to break even.