Sheri Bishop first started working in a Cape Breton bakery when she was 13 and has spent most of the past 25 years baking and cooking for a living.
But primarily a desire to see a few more sunsets and a few less sunrises, and influenced by a projected significant increase in overhead brought on by new minimum wage standards, means Bishop will close With the Grain, the popular cafe she has operated for 18 years in the red brick building on the corner of Woolwich Street and London Road.
“It’s been a really fun ride. I consider myself one of the lucky ones because I got to do what I wanted to,” said Bishop. “It’s really sad to be saying goodbye.”
The café, which seated 32 and another 16 on the patio in the summer, will close for good Jan. 24.
Baked goods, sandwiches, soups, catering and vegetarian take-home meals will still be available at the bakery location across the street. Bishop will still operate Cadence, the vegan and vegetarian restaurant she has owned on Yarmouth Street for almost three years
The location had a dedicated local following throughout the city, noticeably in the Exhibition Park neighbourhood, and reaction on social media from those dedicated followers was swift and sad.
Bishop didn’t want the province’s new minimum wage standard to be seen as the reason she is closing. The main motivator was to work a little less and a little less often.
“There’s a lot of early mornings and that’s been my whole life,” she said.
But the new minimum wage was a contributing factor that helped to create the “perfect storm,” she said.
Bishop said a $14 an hour minimum wage was going to cost her $130,000 in 2018 and while she fully supports the move, it was a little too much too soon for a small business already facing other pressures.
“I looked at this latest mountain and just felt that I could never change With the Grain. I didn’t want to.”
The business is very labour intensive, making everything but mayonnaise in-house, and trying to cut corners to save money wasn’t something she was willing to do.
“I wasn’t going to start nickel-and-diming this. That’s not the kind of business I want to have,” she said.
Twelve people will lose their jobs with the cafe's closure.
Bishop said letting those “phenomenal” employees go is the hardest part.
“Everyone that has worked at With the Grain has left something behind,” Bishop said. “We wouldn’t be here 18 years later if it weren’t for all those people.”
