These beloved Miami stores closed in 2020. Sad as it was, it could have been worse
In our ever-changing city, retailers often come and go. But 2020 was an unusually cruel year, as COVID-19 slowed in-person shopping. With rents already high, some of the city’s best loved shops shuttered their doors forever.
The carnage could have been far worse. Many shops that feared they’d be gone by summer credited a combination of government aid and landlord assistance for their survival of this strange and awful year.
Among those that succumbed:
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▪ Casa de la Guayaberas opened in 1971 next to Versailles in Little Havana and later moved to 5840 SW Eighth St. The store closed in July due to COVID-19. Its founder Ramón Puig, locally known as the “King of Guayaberas” and “El mago de la guayabera,” first launched his guayabera business in 1943 in Cuba and moved to the United States after fleeing Fidel Castro’s Cuba in 1968 with his wife and son on a Freedom Flight. Puig died in 2011.
▪ Culinary school Aragon 101 opened in 2012 in Coral Gables but couldn’t make it through last summer. The culinary school offered several intimate cooking classes every month, each themed on a different type of cuisine, from Colombian to Lebanese. The venue also served as a retail store, selling a range of accessories, home goods and kitchen items including clutches with gold lettering spelling “Girly Goddess” and “One in a Million,” award-winning Castillo de Canena Extra Olive Oil and baby Alpaca throws in pumpkin orange and olive green.
▪ Opened in 2018 in Bay Harbor Islands, BON Chocolatier offered all-vegan and kosher chocolate bars, chocolate pretzels, and pastel-colored truffles in flavors such as marshmallow vanilla and French lavender. The sweetness ended last spring.
▪ Always a pioneer, Books and Books opened its Lincoln Road outpost in 1989. Novels, biographies, newspapers and magazines filled its shelves, along with journals, incense and handcrafted bookmarks. Books and Books Founder Mitchell Kaplan — also the founder of the Miami Book Fair International — blamed high rent rather than COVID-19 for its demise. Books and Books’ Coral Gables flagship and six other locations remain.
▪ Since 2018, Hattie’s House had been a North Miami mainstay for incense, spiritual fragrance oils, ritual waters and crystals. Today you can still buy frankincense from owner Hattie Mae Williams, but only online. Williams follows in the footsteps of her mother, Flossie Williams, who opened Flossie’s Funky Fragrances in 1976 in North Miami and moved to Downtown Miami in the 1990s. Loyal clients included members of the Marley family. Her mother closed shop in 2016 after a fire.
This story was originally published December 28, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
