THE Graze Bar in Portishead has closed its doors.

The restaurant, which can be found on Harbour Road, has closed due to a "dip in trade" after construction work started on the building.

Scaffolding has been put up around the restaurant and is expected to be in place for two years.

This is to address some structural issues.

Residents will still be able to enjoy delicious takeaway graze boards and event catering, which is how the venue first started out around two years ago.

Posting on Facebook, Carly, the owner of the company, said: "As you may of noticed, the mirage building that we are located in now has scaffolding being erected - this is due to the building having many structural issues including a cladding issue…and due to some of these issues the entire building needs all render taken off and is to be re-clad/re rendered.

"We have been informed that in order to do this, the works will not be phased and the entire building will have the scaffolding up (and our end in particular will have boarding all the way around- so no outdoor seating area and no view in or out of the windows…or of the lovely Marina view that we very much rely on. This will be the case for the best part of two years minimum.)

"The works will be very noisy, disruptive and messy, and unfortunately already we have seen a massive dip in trade since the works have started on the building…

"This, along with the us not being able to replace key members of staff have forced us to close the ‘bar’ part of the business, however…the takeaways and event catering (how we first started) will continue.

"The building we occupy, even though small has absolutely huge overheads (our energy bill alone was 23k) and the rent isn’t cheap… we need a decent amount of lovely customers both day and evening to continue to trade.

"No one is more heartbroken or sad than I am about having to close and not only lose a huge initial investment to re fit the unit… but more importantly feeling like I’ve let people down."