By Jennifer Baldwin

Full disclosure: I am writing this story at a window seat in the Spotlight Café after devouring one of my favorite menu items, the Cambrian salad.

No surprise, the Cambrian is four to one the best selling salad at the café, said Jan Fulton, who has been running the establishment for six and a half years.

But what did come as a complete surprise today was Fulton’s announcement that this café – a staple lunch spot for loyal downtown Bakersfield customers – is closing at the end of shift Dec. 23.

“The customers are all very sad. If they hug me too much I’m going to cry,” Fulton said as she took a moment to sit with me. “It’s like losing a friend and I’m losing dozens of friends. They like the place. I’m proud they like this place.”

But ultimately Fulton had to make a business decision. Sales had been falling since October and there was no sign of recovery. Business had actually been down since the previous winter, but at least the café picked up a bit and was breaking even over summer.

Still, six years into her retirement from the City of Bakersfield’s economic and community development office, Fulton says she hasn’t paid herself a cent for running the café. And business is down so much she can no longer pay her staff of eight as well as the food vendors, insurance, licenses, and other business expenses.

“The food business has a very narrow margin,” Fulton said.

And that margin is just too tight in this economy to continue.

Patrons of the Spotlight Café expressed their shock and disappointment this morning after Fulton posted a notice about the closure on Facebook and on the front door of the café. Some were confused, thinking it was the Spotlight Theatre that was closing. But the theater’s artistic director, Hal Friedman, assured people the theater wasn’t going anywhere. Although they occupy the same area of the building at 1622 19^th Street, the café is a separate business from the nonprofit theater.

“We loved having them here and it’s been great. They kept people coming in here all day long,” Friedman said. “But it didn’t support the theater. So the theater will continue as normal and we’re looking into bringing in something that is going to help support us.”

Amy Powell Smith, whose husband is on the theater’s board and daughter is a cast member of the current show, said that she will miss the café greatly.

“It’s definitely going to leave a sizable hole in my life. I spend so much time there,” said Smith, who works for the San Joaquin Community Hospital Foundation. “Jan is a good friend and the hospital here uses a lot of catering through them. It’s one of those unfortunate economic things that has happened. It’s definitely going to be missed by myself, my family and my friends.”

When Smith used to work for the Kern Community Foundation upstairs from the Spotlight Café, it was her cafeteria. Now she and her co-workers at the hospital refer to it as the “cafeteria west.” She eats here at least once a week and especially loves the salads.

“I love, love, love the Cambrian,” she said.

She and everyone else – the salad is topped with dried cranberries, candied pecans, feta cheese and a Balsamic vinaigrette Fulton developed herself. The salad is called the Cambrian because it was inspired by a salad made by her sister-in-law in Cambria. It was one of the first menu items when the café opened in 2003.

Before then, the theater’s founder and owner at the time, Emily Thiroux, was bringing in homemade soups to sell. Fulton, nearing retirement from the city, offered to come in and make salads. Then the two decided to add the specialty Hawaiian ice cream, Lapperts, to the menu. Within two months of that conversation, Spotlight Café opened. The café is a corporation formed between Fulton, Thiroux and the building’s owner, Peggy Darling.

It is surprising to see the café close soon after the recent opening of a new restaurant across the street and on the eve of the opening of the Padre Hotel and its restaurants and bars. Aren’t those a sign of economic growth in downtown Bakersfield?

But for Fulton the numbers just don’t add up.

“People say, ‘But you seem so busy.’ But that’s just the lunch hour. You can’t live on an hour,” she said.

One major limiting factor for the Spotlight Café is that it doesn’t have a kitchen. All of the food is cooked and prepped off-site at a satellite café called Spotlight Bistro in the senior housing development K. Hovanian’s Four Seasons. With no kitchen, the café is limited to lunch items such as sandwiches and salads, which can be assembled behind the counter. Fulton will close the Bistro location as well.

Catering has helped expand the café’s business somewhat, but that has also diminished.

Over the summer, when sales did pick up, Fulton says she researched moving to another location and expanding with a partner.

“But then reality started happening. The estimate to do the work was way more than we could budget. And then business started falling down again,” she said.

Ultimately, she didn’t want to go “that deep in a hole and not know where we’d come out because of the economy.”

Cathy Butler, president of the Downtown Business Association and a regular patron of the cafe, said she was sad to hear of its closing. She sees downtown Bakersfield on the verge of great success, with the Padre opening in January and several other projects in the works.

“I tell people to just hold on,” she said.

But Fulton can’t afford to hold on any longer. As someone who once worked in economic development for the city, she says she knows the importance of local business to the city’s center – especially restaurants and other venues that bring people downtown. She has felt proud to bring livelihood to 19^th Street through the café and participating in the First Friday arts stroll by offering Pasta on the Patio. And she does feel as though she is hurting downtown’s growth by closing the café.

“I certainly see life that wasn’t here before and I feel really good to be a part of that,” Fulton said. “But I also see how much further there is to go and it’s not moving fast enough. It’s exciting to look back on the last six years and see how it’s evolved. But it’s baby steps.”

As for the staff of eight who will be out of work as of Christmas Eve, the closure really hurts. One employee cried as they closed up after the lunch crowd today. Others sighed relief after the lunch rush ended and there were no more customers asking, “What are you going to do now?”

Paula Dawson, a server who has worked at Spotlight for two years, said the announcement of the café’s closure is a shell shocker. She is a single parent to four children.

“I don’t know if I should buy Christmas presents or hold off, not knowing what’s going to happen,” she said.

But there is some hope. She and one other staff member went to the Padre Hotel’s job fair during their break today and already have interviews lined up for tomorrow morning.

Café manager and head chef Genesis Lambert said he’s actually going to take a little time off to relax and regroup before launching into a job search. He’s definitely planning to stick around the Bakersfield restaurant scene, though.

“I’m like a groundhog. I’ll pop up,” he said. “This isn’t the last time you’ll have a Cambrian salad, I guarantee it.”