This is really happening: Franny’s has long been among the best places in Brooklyn to get pizza — no small feat — as well as a neighborhood favorite for straightforward Italian food, with one of the most impressive wine lists in the city. But according to a note sent out this afternoon (and a message on the restaurant’s website), owners Francine Stephens and Andrew Feinberg will close Franny’s for good after service on Sunday, August 20, though they promise the restaurant “will continue in some way in the future.”

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After much study, he has determined that the old business model simply doesn’t work anymore. “The real estate would cost 400,000 euros, and then they had to buy equipment, so by the time they opened, the average boulanger was 800,000 euros in the red,” he said. “They then would be working 20 hours a day because they couldn’t afford to hire anyone to help them, and still, they had trouble turning any profit.”

He plans to get around that problem by shrinking each store, reducing the number of people needed to run it, buying ingredients centrally to enhance the shops’ bargaining power and limiting the number of products sold. “To try to make profit, boulangers were trying to sell anything and everything, instead of trying to sell more of the things people really want — the baguettes des copains, the ficelles, the boules,” Mr. Rigo said.

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