Category Archives: KingsMJ2020_1

Restaurants, diners in Nova Scotia could lose $1B in sales

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Before Nova Scotia put COVID-19 restrictions in place, customers lined up at the door to Mary’s Place Café II for their locally famous garlic fries. As the pandemic became a more serious threat to Canada in March, co-owner Kelly James saw the number of customers entering the diner dwindle.

Mary’s Place initially tried to hold onto customers with takeout options, but when Premier Stephen McNeil declared a provincial state of emergency, the rest of their customers vanished. With little to no income, the restaurant couldn’t keep up with the financial weight of rent, utilities, and keeping the grills running. In mid-March, it closed and has yet to reopen.

James said they considered closing for good, joining the nearly 10% of restaurants that permanently closed across Canada in March.

“It was just a tremendous loss. It went from being able to hold our own to nothing,” James said.

“It was in our best interest to close, as it was costing us more, even in those couple of days, to keep it running.”

In Nova Scotia, the restaurant industry makes up nearly five per cent of the province’s GDP and employs about 32,000 people, according to a spokesperson for the Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia (RANS).

That’s why the association predicted restaurant sales could drop by $1 billion, and up to 500 restaurants could apply for bankruptcy this year.

It’s especially ominous for independent Nova Scotian restaurant owners, who make up 65% of licensed food operators in the province — the highest ratio in Canada, according to RANS.

Full-service restaurants — like Boston Pizza or local diners — have been hit the hardest and will find it most difficult to improve, explains Bruce McAdams, a professor with University of Guelph’s School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management.

Unlike fast food restaurants, full-service business models needed to be altered to manage takeout or were forced to close entirely.

In June, Nova Scotia allowed dine-in restaurants to reopen at full capacity with certain restrictions in place, but that doesn’t mean they’ll begin making money.

“It’s not just a matter of opening again and everyone rushing back and it being back to normal, the foreseeable future is going to be insanely uncertain and financially challenging,” said McAdams.

They’ll have to reinvest in stock, retrain staff, and implement certain mandated measures. Physical distancing measures also may restricts owners from meeting full capacity.

That’s all if customers choose to walk through the door.

A survey conducted by Angus Reid Institute, a national poll tracker, alongside Dalhousie University professors found just over half (52 per cent) of respondents plan to avoid eating at some restaurants because of potential health risks.

Of the survey’s 1,500 respondents, 38 per cent said they will likely return to restaurants over the summer, while 33 per cent said they plan to wait until a second wave of infections has passed.

Plans to avoid dining out are detrimental to restaurants, like Mary’s Place, who need increased traffic when they finally reopen to meet increased expenses.

“For the restaurants to open again and follow the restrictions that have been in place it required a lot of financial investment on their part and a lot of work,” said Natasha Chestnut, Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia’s association and marketing administrator.

For Mary’s Place, James says their future is going to come with government support. They applied for Nova Scotia’s Small Business Reopening and Support Grant, provided by the province, and expects to ask for more financial assistance if its offered later this year.

Mary’s Place doesn’t have a reopening date yet, but James is hoping to start dishing out garlic fries as soon as possible.

Cat shelter struggles to pay rent with food donations

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Co-owner of Refuge Le Château, Martin Provost,struggles to keep cat shelter afloat during pandemic. Photo credit: Marianne Lassonde

A non-profit feline matchmaker in Quebec’s Eastern Townships has to rely on a GoFundMe campaign to keep the building – and all of its residents – alive.

Refuge Le Château is a shelter in Sherbrooke, Quebec, with over 150 animals to adopt – or have coffee with. It opened its doors in 2015 to welcome abandoned cats; two years later, it became a bustling café with a side-gig in zootherapy.

Claudia Beauregard has reaped these therapeutic benefits since she started volunteering in 2016.

“I didn’t want to live anymore,” said Beauregard, who was in a depressed state and contemplated suicide before discovering the shelter.

“When I discovered the shelter and its resident cats, I felt so welcomed.”

The shelter operates on donations of many shapes and sizes: from cat litter to $7 monetary donations for a hot beverage and a tour. It usually made between $2000 to $5000 a week. They also had a weekend donations table where people could purchase cat toys and knick-knacks; it generated $180 to $210 a month in revenue.

But it all came to a sudden halt on March 15th.

While coffee isn’t an essential service, the shelter is. The non-profit kept its doors open during the pandemic but has not been able to generate as much profit. The GoFundMe was its first cry for help and a temporary substitute for the cat café, raising $1170 for food, veterinary bills and rent.

Instead of stopping for drinks with a furry friend, guests must now take their chances with day-by-day adoption appointments – but they don’t generate any revenue. The cost of adopting a cat, about $80 to $200, covers veterinary bills and sterilization.

Provost said that “Corona adoptions” have the phone ringing nonstop and they can’t keep up because there is a lack of volunteers at the shelter. Before COVID-19, they had, on average, 30 volunteers – now they have 10.

This means the shelter is only open weekends, limiting the number of donations and purchases. Provost suspects they have lost $50 to $60 thousand donations since COVID-19.

“People love to give things like cat food but we don’t have a lot of monetary donations,” said Provost. “If the building owner didn’t help, the shelter would be gone.”

Ernan Haruvy, a marketing professor at McGill University, says charities should expect a decrease in donations due job insecurity. But he’s not worried for them – just the people and animals that depend on the charities.

“The only victims here are the cats,” said Haruvy.

Without volunteers as baristas and tour guides, the shelter had to backtrack to its early days.

Those days, according to Provost, were rough.

In 2018, Provost had to sell his successful T-shirt printing business due to personal bankruptcy. Provost said the he had to invest his own money into the shelter to help cover rent and damages. That year, Refuge Le Château was robbed – more than $2000 was stolen. In December 2019, the shelter experienced severe flooding.

“[The shelter’s] internalizing the suffering of the beneficiaries, that’s why they’re in a crisis situation,” said Haruvy.

According to Haruvy, this happens often with charities. Financially, a charity can recover easily from the lack of donations but their personal involvement with the people and animals dependent on their donations leads to a financial crisis.

But with their increasing popularity, it seemed to be finally looking up for Refuge Le Château. The grand opening of the mini-farm would have been this year.

“The more time passes, the worst it seems to get,” said Provost.

But the shelter still has loyal donors – and they are why Provost decided to hold off on becoming a charity.

Provost submitted the application a year ago but doesn’t feel an urgency to become a charity. He had hoped it would attract bigger donors because of tax breaks. According to Haruvy, a designation as a charity could also lead to government grants, allowing the shelter to hire full-time staff and pay for necessities.

But grants, according to Provost are hard to get when your charity is for animals. He says the paperwork is also a lot more tedious and requires a full-time accountant – Refuge Le Château does not currently have these funds.

As of now, everything is volunteer-based save for a few workers. Which means they are ineligible for COVID-19 relief funds.

The shelter is hopeful but doesn’t know when – or if – things will go back to how they once were.

South End café fights to survive during COVID-19

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Kelly Irvine closes her shop early on July 14, after poor weather turned away an already limited number of customers. (Travis Devonport, King’s Journalism)

Long-time co-owner of Coburg Social, Kelly Irvine, is leading a fight she says is a matter of survival for her business.

On June 19, Irvine filed a petition to District 7 Councillor, Waye Mason. The petition received 1,200 signatures in support of letting the café expand its patio space. The addition would offer 20 extra seats but requires a portion of Henry Street to be closed off. Mason brought the petition to council and it was later denied.

Having the chance to temporarily expand their café doesn’t guarantee they’ll make more money but she knows it will let her increase her customer capacity, from 50 to 70 per cent.

“The city doesn’t have tourists, Dal doesn’t have students, Dal doesn’t have conferences, so we’re fighting against a whole bunch of battles but at least if we had the seats for people to sit in, we’d have a chance at increasing our sales,” says Irvine.

Before the lockdown, Coburg Social employed a staff of twenty-five. During the pandemic, Irvine had to lay everyone off. Relying on her four children while scraping by on 20 per cent of their regular sales, together her family was able to run orders at the front window, as well as online and by phone.

Since the café opened dine in service on June 9, Irvine rehired 12 of her 25 workers using the wage subsidy. Coburg Social has also qualified for the $40,000 Canada Emergency Business Account loan (CEBA). When asked how long she plans to use it, Irvine laughs and says, “as long as we possibly can.”

Professor and Business Analyst, Ed McHugh says the small business sector has been hit hard. “My heart bleeds for small businesses right now. For a lot of small businesses, it’s not about succeeding right now: it’s about surviving.” McHugh says big businesses can absorb shocks far better than small businesses can. Small business owners are dealing with something they never anticipated, because of it, their livelihoods are in jeopardy.

Currently serving 400 regulars on a busy day, this is a fraction of the 1000 customers she’d serve before COVID-19. McHugh says in order for small businesses like the Coburg Social to recover, owners can’t be afraid to raise prices, lay off staff, and try unconventional ways to promote themselves. For Irvine, her patio proposal would do that.

Irvine wants to extend her patio capacity by 20 seats. Halifax Council declined her request that required a partial road closure in order to extend the space. (Travis Devonport, King’s Journalism)

According to Mason, the current plan Irvine has submitted doesn’t meet the city’s expectations. He says the café needs to provide an improved plan that accounts for wheelchair accessibility, at both ends of the patio. Irvine has also requested to install pavers where it’s currently grass. Mason says that request has been denied and will remain that way.

“We’re encouraging businesses to get rid of parking on the street and make that into a patio, put a couple barricades at the beginning and end of the patio area. Closing a street is a whole other process that requires a public hearing, and a whole bunch of time, even if it’s temporary,” says Mason.

Irvine says she doesn’t feel like her voice is being heard by the city. “We’re trying to ask the city to think outside of the box, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, maybe relax some rules, maybe let things happen in a different way than they have before.” Irvine plans on submitting an improved plan. If that isn’t approved, she says Coburg Social will continue to fight onward — at 50 per cent capacity — until they can’t anymore.

As Irvine and her staff continue to adapt, the challenges they face have left hope running thin. “I think everyone’s done what they can do in the midst of a pandemic. At this point the only thing we can hope for is a vaccine. I don’t see any other answers.”