The Scale Poké Bar will launch its third location, at 286 Market Street in South Burlington, with a soft opening on December 10, followed by a December 13 grand opening. It joins the original Williston and Essex Junction locations of the locally owned restaurant group, which has served poké and açai bowls since 2017. Co-owner Perry Farr said the newest spot will debut morning smoothies and coffee, which will show up at the other restaurants over the winter.
On December 7, owner Laura Vilalta announced on social media that she will close Black Cap Coffee & Bakery’s Burlington location at 42 Church Street at the end of the year. Black Cap’s original Stowe location, which opened in 2010, and its Morrisville and Waterbury spots will remain open.
Vilalta attributed the closure to “two years of steadily declining sales,” cited the “extraordinarily difficult” downtown economic environment and noted that “in the last year alone, the Burlington shop has had at least one overdose occur in the store.” In her announcement, she directly rebutted the claim by some employees of the Burlington Black Cap that the closure was related to their efforts to unionize.
In a press release sent to Seven Days the day preceding Vilalta’s statement, workers from the Church Street shop said they would launch a strike “in protest of the company’s targeting of unionized workers in mass layoffs to discourage unionization and the company’s refusal to bargain a union contract.” They called the timing of the closure decision “suspicious,” noting that “we were just about finished bargaining our first contract, and our last major hurdle was negotiating our wages.”
On the morning of December 8, Black Cap on Church Street was closed. A sign on the door read “Store on Strike” with a call for a boycott stuck below it.
This article appears in Dec 10-16 2025.
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