A landmark downtown restaurant is closing its doors for nearly a month as its owner revamps its image.

Paradise Cafe, 728 Mass., will close Monday for remodeling to accommodate a new bakery and doughnut shop, said Schuyler Lister, who has owned the business just more than a year. The Paradise bar will remain open during renovation.

He also plans to offer a new menu at the restaurant, which has been in operation since 1984.

“The name of this place always has officially been the Paradise Cafe & Bakery, but very few people realize how fantastic our baked goods are,” Lister said. “We’re going to try to change that.”

In addition to the pies, cakes and other desserts that have long been a part of the Paradise menu, the bakery inside the renovated Paradise front door also will serve doughnuts. Lister said he knows there’s demand for a doughnut shop on Massachusetts Street because he still hears from people who miss Jennings Daylight Donuts, a downtown doughnut shop that closed in the mid-1990s.

The new doughnut shop won’t limit its draw to the breakfast crowd, though. Lister said he would keep doughnut operations open past 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays to appeal to customers leaving downtown bars.

When the Paradise reopens in mid-September, the menu will be about a third of its current size.

Schuyler Lister, owner of Paradise Cafe, will close the downtown restaurant Monday for about three weeks to remodel. He plans to keep the bar portion of the business open during remodeling.

“We’re going to shrink the menu down and just do what we do best,” Lister said.

Lister said he hadn’t decided what to drop and what to keep from the menu, but said the restaurant would run specials featuring items dropped from the regular menu.

The changes, he said, were in response to complaints from customers who had to wait.

“I listen to the customers,” Lister said. “What I heard the most was how many people love the Paradise, but their single biggest complaint was sometimes it takes too long to get the food. Part of the reason that happens is because our menu is so huge and we’re doing all of it by hand.”

He declined to say whether sales had fallen during the year he’s owned Paradise.

“It has been a phenomenally crazy year,” said Lister, who also owns the retail shop Creation Station in downtown. “It has been single-handedly the most difficult undertaking I have ever done. The restaurant business is a tough business.”

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