It’s sort of like a truck driven by a friend ran into a car driven by another friend. Not personal friends. I don’t think I ever met Jeremy Robbins, the owner of the Carden Street Café, but he fed me lots of times.
It was always good. The Thai-inspired orange chicken curry never disappointed, but the West African lamb curry usually won an internal debate about what to order. Put a plate of chicken satay in front of Lynne and she’ll be your friend forever.
The restaurant (the car in this little comparison) was 35 years old. The city – the truck – is 185. It’s been in the shop a lot lately. Robbins claims it collided with him just as it was coming out from a major overhaul.
He says he is a casualty of the lengthy construction project at city hall. Businesses up and down the street were hit hard over the past few years. There’s no doubt about that. But was it the fatal blow? Like many collisions, there were several contributing causes.
It doesn’t make sense that construction would be the sole cause. If it was, why wait until it is all but over? Why tough it out for all those years, only to close up when the street is getting back to life again, regaining the vitality that has always made it a prime retail area?
We ate there many times over the past few years. Every winter we get the Borealis Series at the River Run. Five concerts, with supper. Carden Street was always busy. We always had to reserve a table. The customer base was as loyal as any owner could want. The place was packed all last weekend, right up until the doors were locked for the last time.
Some staff members were willing, eager even, to buy the business and keep it running. They considered it back in 2007, but an assortment of personal reasons worked against the purchase. Robbins bought it. He was working there at the time.
A similar sale now would have solved two problems. It would have kept the business running, and it would have relieved at least some of Robbins’ stresses.
Another factor was more compelling than the construction and any offers to purchase. The building owner, Milan Lesic, wanted a five-year lease. Robbins wanted shorter. Rather than spend time debating the matter, the landlord signed with someone else who will open a different restaurant in the same location.
Lesic didn’t get where he is by being the first to blink in a standoff over leases. There are shopkeepers all over downtown who know this.
One thing sours the taste of the cheese cake. It’s one blemish in the legacy. They were still selling gift certificates right through the Christmas shopping period. More than one Guelph fireside stocking held one when Santa climbed back on his sleigh on Christmas morning. If they weren’t used by last Sunday, they never will be.
Leading into the holiday, Robbins knew his lease wasn’t being renewed. He had already begun looking for people to buy the fixtures. So why take money for something that would probably never be used?
Within the past month, two of my favourite eateries have closed. First, Latino’s. Then Carden Street. It is sad, but it’s the nature of the business. Good new restaurants will rise to fill the void. Some might live for 35 years, many won’t. I’ll miss the ones that close. I’ll welcome the new ones that open.
As far as the collision goes, don’t blame the truck driver. It wasn’t all her fault.
Hi Alan,
Thank you for your years of supporting the Carden Street Cafe… we may never have met personally, but I certainly recognized your name in our reservation book and your familiar presence in the restaurant. I would also like to extend a big “thank you” for all of the other kind words and support we have received from our customers in the past few weeks. It certainly has been an emotional time for many. The final weekend at the Carden was the busiest that I can ever remember!
Your article was brought to my attention, and I felt that I needed to respond (as you never attempted to speak with me directly to gain any further insight into the matter – I have nothing to hide and would have been happy to answer your questions). Much of what you’ve written is accurate, but there are a few points that I would like to address…
First, it might appear that you’ve read some of the local media or seen the piece that CTV news aired? In all three of those cases, I answered their specific questions as best I could (and they approached me – not the other way around), but I never stated that the construction was the “sole cause” of our problems. Though I won’t go into detail about all of them, there were many factors that contributed to our struggles over the past few years. The construction (first the 2-3+ year construction of City Hall; the multi-year closure of the Wyndham Street access to downtown; the many other projects around downtown over the past few years; and finally, the direct closure of our block for much of 2010 and 2011) has had a significant impact on most of the businesses on Carden Street and many others around downtown. I’ve been looking forward to the “end of the construction” as long as I’ve owned the Carden Street Cafe! I’m not trying to say that we didn’t have extremely busy times during these periods. Our customers have been wonderful in their commitment to our restaurant, and anyone who had a reservation with us would without a doubt manage to find their way in to see us regardless of street closures or parking trouble. Where we HAVE felt the impact, was in the lack of casual foot traffic on our block. Fewer people have been making the spontaneous decision to come into the restaurant because fewer and fewer people have been passing by… go talk to business owners up and down our block and you’ll get a good sense for how each of them have been impacted.
For us, to see our sales averages slip by about $300/day from approx $1950 to $1650 is like losing three or four tables per night – not so significant on any given night… but over a calendar year, that amounts to a loss of over $80,000 in revenues. We had just lost an entire patio season and hadn’t been able to replace our storefront sign that had come down. Many business owners on Carden have suffered greater losses than I have during the lengthy construction process, but most likely had a greater “safety net” or more assets to fall back on to absorb their losses. I haven’t been paying myself for the last year. Paying our staff and suppliers was the priority. One of our problems was the growing number of expensive repairs needed around the premises. When these expenses started mounting along with my debts, it put the restaurant in a precarious position. I’ve been managing under these circumstances for long enough. I suppose that I can be faulted for not having enough money to absorb the losses during construction, pay for our repairs and necessary upgrades, and continue making all of our regular tax payments and bills payments.
Another point that I would like to make is that you stated that “I knew that our lease wasn’t being renewed” and that I “had already started looking for people to buy the fixtures”…. these two statements are false. With the business struggling, I had made every effort to get through the construction and “reap the rewards” once the street was finished. Nobody is more discouraged than I am that we made it all the way until January only to shut down right as the new rink was flooded with people. I was still making plans for the spring until right before we closed for Christmas. I didn’t know this to be true during the Christmas shopping period, so to stop selling gift certificates would not have made sense. We refunded or redeemed almost 50 gift certificates in our final week… and in closing the restaurant, the remaining gift certificates was one of my main concerns. I even had a brief conversation with the new business owner about trying to figure a way to transfer the gift certificates, but it didn’t make sense for him. When I knew with certainty that we were closing, we only had 10 business days left to operate!
Also… I never wanted (or asked for) a shorter lease. I’m not sure where you heard that? I had been in discussions with Mr. Lesic, and he had been co-operative and understanding in helping me through some of our struggles. When I appealed to him for some patience to help get us stabilized, he informed me that he DID have another party interested in signing a five year lease. At that point, I had the first chance to sign one of my own, but with mounting debts and thousands of dollars worth of repairs and upgrades looming… I really felt that I had no choice but to step aside. The process all happened VERY quickly.
In summary, I realize that construction is a fact of life. There have been lengthy projects on Victoria, Elizabeth and Gordon streets (among others) that have had impacts on the residents and businesses in those areas. What I feel is different in our case, is that the street has been in a state of flux for five or six years. The traffic has changed from two-way to one-way to closed to open to closed to one-way and now back to two-way… and people are confused. We all understand that construction in inevitable, but to see delays and constant set-backs to each element of a project is certainly frustrating! Any time in the past few years that we were given a date by which a project would be completed, there was a guarantee that the date was just wishful thinking. That’s not to say that the City didn’t make efforts to inform us and include us in the discussion of what was going on, and ask how they could mitigate the impact upon us. However, many of these projects seem (in retrospect) to have been poorly run, or perhaps started without a fully researched approach in place. I think the entire process should have taken place in a smoother, more organized way – better planning could have mitigated the impact of these construction projects on the local businesses. I think the street looks great now, but the route taken from point A to point B was not the most direct path.
I realize that the food industry can be a tumultuous one, and I wish great success to the new restaurant going into the space. I would be more than happy to meet for a coffee if you’d like to chat about this further.
Jeremy Robbins
Carden Street Cafe