??? are our last resort to save our small business. To save our dream, and with it, the heart of our small community.
A year ago we bought a lodge, investing not only in Bruce County but in our chance at the Canadian dream. That dream, the one we’ve put everything into is days from ending.
The commercial insurance industry has decided that profits aren’t in the picture for small businesses in Ontario, and our livelihood is at stake.
The lack of regulation or cap to insurance premium increases in the COVID era threatens every single tourism, hospitality, and retail business in Ontario. We just happened to get our renewal first.
With 2 weeks of notice we’ve been given the cold hard facts: Our insurance costs just to open our door is rising from $1333/month to over $57,000 annually. They were nice enough to tell us to pucker up with a warning email first.
If $57,000 sounds like an exorbitant amount of money, it’s because it is! It is more than our GROSS REVENUE over our first 3 months of operations.
It requires us to sell 2 of our 8 lodge rooms every single night of the year just to generate enough cash to PAY that bill, let alone any other bill, wage, tax, employee or maybe one day down the road, profit.
How can any small business survive a $41,000 increase? We’ve only owned this lodge for 13 months, so of course we’ve never even had a claim. We barely even operated. We followed & supported the guidelines, we added protections to reduce capacity and keep people safe.
Our small, remote destination 3 hours north west of Toronto would need to sell 93 orders of Fish & Chips a day, every day, 365 days a year to generate the profit just to cover our insurance. Our community is made up of less than 500, with about 10,000 living within a half hour drive in and around neighbouring Sauble Beach, Tobermory, & Wiarton.
We currently serve food 4 days a week in the dining room of our historic wood fishing lodge. To imagine the life we’ve worked so hard to make could be over is beyond heartbreaking. That out of the blue we need to figure out a way to either generate an EXTRA $4000/month in additional profit, further fund this deficit, or painfully accept defeat.
We simply don’t have the resources to sustain the losses that the insurance industry is forcing us to incur. The chance of success in the hospitality industry as we know it is over in Ontario.
???? ?? ? ?????? ?? ? ??????. How many already teetering businesses will be forced to follow us when their renewals come?
Premier Doug Ford: hear our screams - this is The NEXT Threat. These are the small businesses that make Ontario great being picked off one by one and you need to act NOW before it’s too late.
We have had dozens of quotes with no company willing to underwrite our business. We’ve had brokers tell us we’re lucky we’re getting offered a renewal at all. That others before us have just been cancelled, so count our blessings.
We took a huge risk opening our restaurant. Staying ???? during the winter in a place where sometimes even the highways can’t.
We’re not looking for a Government handout or a GoFundMe from the thousands of people supporting us online. ?? ???? ?????? ? ???????? ??????! YOU can give that to us by standing up and stopping this insanity.
With 6 amazing team members believing in our dream we attempted the improbable. We took pride in offering year round jobs in an area known for anything but. We have committed to paying a living wage to those willing to make their life here with us as part of our lodge family.
We’re between a rock & a hard place, and YOUR local bistro, restaurant or lodge is ????.
Unless you step in. Unless you use your powers to fight for the people. To fight for us. To make sure Ontario stays ???? ??? ????????.
from the Red Bay Lodge on behalf of hard-working small businesses across Ontario
