22-05-2025
Desperate Wichita restaurant owner trying to survive nightmare mouse problem, may relocate
In terms of nightmare scenarios for a restaurant, what happened last week at Bella Vita Bistro was pretty bad, says owner Lory Wooley.
A table of diners was finishing up its meal when suddenly, a mouse jumped from the top of the booth onto the table.
The customer screamed. The mouse scurried into the kitchen, where it met its end in a trap.
But the damage was done — or so Wooley thought.
Later that week, Wooley said, a customer posted a Google review of the restaurant that exaggerated the already bad situation, writing that a rat had run across a customer's foot and landed in a trap, where it was left squealing while customers tried to eat.
Now, customers are staying away in droves, said Wooley, who is contemplating breaking her lease and moving from her Italian restaurant's home of 15 years at 120 N. West St. to a new spot. She's already been out looking at properties but hasn't found the right fit, she said.
She'd like to stay — Bella Vita has been considered one of Wichita's best Italian restaurants since it opened in 2010. But she's been dealing for eight months with a mouse infestation that she's struggled to get under control, no matter how many solutions she's tried. And she's tried everything, she said.
'At this particular rate, the way it's going, I won't make it to the end of the month,' she said.
When the problem developed into an issue in January, Wooley said, she thought it was best to keep her head down and spend her energy fighting the mouse problem in her building. But after the Google review went up this weekend, she said, she decided she had to speak out.
On Monday, she published a long, impassioned post on the Bella Vita Bistro Facebook page detailing her plight and asking customers not to give up on her.
Was it the right move? She thinks so.
'I had no choice but to address it,' she said. 'I thought that was the safest way.'
It all started in October, Wooley said.
It was a Sunday, and she decided to organize the little storage shed that sits just behind the restaurant.
'I moved something, and there was a nest of mice,' she said. 'Well, I closed the shed and said, 'goodbye, thank you very much. I'm going home now.''
After that, Wooley said, she could see mice running around outside the shed. She spent $1,200 installing a new back door with a tight seal and closed up any holes she could find in the restaurant's walls, just to make sure the mice didn't make it inside.
But they still did, and Wooley hired professional exterminators to help her deal with the problem, she said. She bought snap traps, sticky traps, ultrasonic traps and electric traps.
She couldn't put out poison, she said, because if the mice died in the walls, she'd have a much bigger, much smellier, much less solvable problem.
In December, she said, a disgruntled employee she'd fired called the health department to report a mouse problem, which prompted a visit from the board of health.
'When he came in, his words to me were, 'You're obviously doing everything you can to get rid of them, but you do have your work cut out for you, because it's freezing outside.' This is in January, mind you.'
The inspector turned in his report, which was published on the Department of Agriculture website and then published as part of The Wichita Eagle's restaurant inspection report, which comes out weekly and lists restaurants that failed inspections.
The report, published online on Jan. 25, said that Bella Vita had 10 violations, including mouse droppings on clean pans and utensils, live and dead mice, and 'mouse droppings too numerous to count' throughout the restaurant.
What those black-and-white reports don't tend to include, Wooley said, is the nuanced reality of what the inspector finds. The dead mice were in four traps that she hadn't yet had a chance to check that day. The live mouse was one caught in a trap who hadn't yet expired.
'But it doesn't say that,' she said. 'It makes it sound like I've got mice lying all over the freaking place.... His comments were, 'Your guys are doing a great job in the kitchen. All the food looks fine. It's all at the proper temperature. Your guys are doing a good job.' But that's not in the report. Instead, it's just the black-and-white 'live and dead mice everywhere.''
Someone who saw the report shared it on Google, encouraging people to avoid the restaurant. And they have. Wooley is even seeing fewer of her regulars.
'I've lost more business and more business and more business,' she said.
Since the weather has warmed up, the mice have become less of a problem, Wooley said. But they're still coming in, sometimes chewing through the drywall to get access.
Wooley is still catching them in traps, too — and then there's the one who escaped capture and made his Tuesday-night adventure across the customer's table. (That customer gamely moved to the other side of the table and ordered dessert, Wooley said.)
Her explanatory post on Monday included strong words for her landlord, who Wooley accused of not taking her problem seriously. But this week, the landlord has stepped up and has provided a special mouse-discouraging disinfectant to all the tenants in the strip center and has also installed other mice-deterring devices and contraptions.
Wooley said she can understand how customers might be leery. But she wants people to know that she continues to do everything she can to get rid of the unwelcome visitors. The inspector visited Bella Vita again in February, according to the Department of Agriculture's database, and turned in a report saying that the restaurant was in compliance with health standards.
'I need some people to come back,' she said. 'And hopefully, after people see my post, and I assure them that this is not just something that I'm ignoring and that it's not that they're running wild . . . maybe they'll come back and help support me so that I can stay in business.'
People in the post's comment section have overall been kind and supportive, she said. Most are suggesting places she could move, including the old Le Monde building (already taken), the old Sticky Bird building (she'd be willing to take a look), and the spot Panera moved out of at NewMarket Square (she doubts she could afford the rent there.)
Earlier this week, she looked at the stacked shipping container space at Revolutsia that Prost will be leaving when it moves downtown next month, she said. But she's not sure it's the right fit for Bella Vita.
She needs a spot, she said, that has already operated as a restaurant. She can't afford to install a hood and start over in the kitchen. If she could find the right place, she'd take it.
But she doesn't want to move. She'd rather solve the mice problem and stay where she is.
'It's a nightmare,' she said. 'I haven't slept for two days. I'm so upset. I don't want to lose my restaurant.'
Wooley said she'd provide updates on her battle with the mice — and on her search for a new space.
