For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Gruppo Thin Crust Pizza.

Mel Bailey

Last week Evan Mann, manager of Gruppo, sent the word out via text message: “FREE BEER TONIGHT!!!” The pizzeria had just relocated from its longtime location at 186 Avenue B and opened up a handful of blocks away, at 98 Avenue B.  Why the move? Antonio Gomez, the owner, said his landlord tripled his rent. “We never missed a payment and when we reached the end of our lease we expected to have a civilized conversation with our landlord about the lease, and it was not a nice discussion at all,” he said. “So, we had to pay them what they wanted month to month and at the same time find a spot very quickly.” About a year later, thin-crust pies are coming out of the oven just a few blocks away. We asked Mr. Gomez how the new spot is working out.

Why do you think your landlord acted this way? It seems it’s better to have someone in the space than not, yet it never seems to be that landlords think that way.

My understanding is that the building was sold to a corporation. The previous owners were wonderful, but the new corporation, we just are numbers on the page. It was a strange, painful situation for us. There was no room for negotiation. It was clear that we weren’t a part of their plans.

Mel Bailey

What were you paying the old locations?

We were playing around $2,700 a month and they now wanted about $8,000. But it’s just a 500-square-foot space, so that didn’t make sense at all. At first we couldn’t believe it. We didn’t understand how you triple rent. We were doing month-to-month and paid that for a year, which made for a difficult situation. But rent is bad everywhere. Finally we found a place that made sense, but we really wanted to stay there since we’d been there since 1999.

What made you settle on what you’re moving the business into?

I’m paying $7,500 for 1,500 square feet so that makes a lot more sense numbers-wise to us. This we can do. I think it was a blessing in disguise. While 2012 was a really difficult year for us and we really had to operate in crisis mode; we were able to afford the change. We built a new restaurant that we could afford and we still get to stay in the East Village.

Avenue B seems to really be struggling. Life Café was a big loss to the area.

There are so many places opening and closing on Avenue B that you have to wonder if the landlords are in touch with the reality of what the block and the businesses can afford. Do they know who lives here and what they want? I don’t know.

Mel Bailey Mr. Gomez speaks to Tim “Eater X” Janus.

You’ve only been open a week, but what’s different about the two blocks?

It’s much busier now, which is nice. Twelfth Street to Sixth Street is a totally different vibe. It’s livelier and we have all these new customers. Before we had people who were going out or around Stuy Town and discovering us. Now we’re in the center.

What will be different about this Gruppo?

We’re going to try out our new fresh, on the spot in-house made pasta menu. We’ve extended our menu to be bigger and we have a bigger seating capacity.

How do you make sure the numbers make sense?

The economics of running a restaurant is hard, so you really have to make sure what you’re doing makes sense. You need to look at your numbers very carefully. You have to understand those numbers and pay close attention to your margins. You can’t be in business for the landlord. Ours shut off our power, heat, and water, drilled above when we were open. It was clear that they wanted us out. It was crazy stuff and with zero communication. In our old place we would have needed a lot of new things like a new floor. It was good that before we did anything that we waited to see what would happen at the end of our lease.

Mel Bailey

Food prices have gone up over the years; how do you manage?

We try not to raise our prices. Wheat, flour, cheese, meat, has all gone up. It’s hard to absorb those increases and then the vendors add those fees. We’ve probably gone up about 10 percent slowly over the years and really just on the more expensive items with truffle oil or prosciutto in them. Growing with more restaurants has helped us to negotiate vendor prices more. But then there are other expenses that go up too. It’s not just rent. There’s liability, workman’s comp that all go up and keep going up. It’s scary and we can’t control it.

What advice do you have to new restaurant owners?

You have to have a well-received product. We are very lucky. It’s very challenging to open a business in New York now than it was ten years ago. It’s not just running a business and building it. The city doesn’t make it easy. You have to deal with the Department of Buildings, Con-Ed, and the health department. It’s never-ending and we end up feeling like the bad guy when we’re the one creating jobs and giving to the community while the city just comes by to charge us.

Correction: April 6, 2013. This post was revised to correct an error. The original version misstated that Gruppo was located on East 10th Street and moved to 186 Avenue B. In fact it moved from 186 Avenue B to 98 Avenue B.