Wow, That Was A Whirlwind!

Flipside is closed now. After spending the Fall last year working on the creation of my cafe/bar, mini-donut shop concept, I took possession of a beautiful 1000-square-foot space in Toronto's Historic Distillery District at the start of 2019. It took two full months to renovate the space and continue to work on development. We opened for weekends in March, did six days a week in April, and then, starting in May, we were open everyday until this past Friday when I decided to close down.

It was a heartbreaking decision, which like all my decisions was made very quickly when the financial reality of my situation presented two options: crash and burn in a flurry of bankruptcy sometime in mid-2020 or exit gracefully by the end of the month with a lot of debt. I didn't want to ruin supplier relationships or deal with collection agencies hunting me down, I have been feeling like I was in over my head since the start and the idea that things were going to soon take a much worse turn didn't sit well.

The weekend was spent crying, cleaning, and packing up a shop that I have spent a literal year building. The painful implosion of a lifelong dream of hospitality small business ownership. I am not as devastated as I thought I would be, the year has been very challenging and I am definitely worn down. A second blow to my already fragile emotional state was that instead of getting everything moved into storage, at the last minute all my equipment and supplies ended up going into the garage, porch and dining room at Casa Verde. Now I get to be surrounded by the byproducts of my dream's demise everyday.

I locked the door and gave back the keys today. No more Flipside, I am gutted to be saying goodbye to this incredible experience.