Pop-up bistros served up costs, not profits, for NCC

Documents reveal details of plans presented to management committee

Pop-up outdoor bistros that appeared last summer were designed as revenue-earners for the National Capital Commission. But as budgets more than doubled, the project shrank and revenues fell.

Last summer was the time when the NCC learned that opening a new restaurant can be a quick way to lose your shirt.

The NCC designed three openair bistros built from metal shipping containers and fitted up with kitchen equipment.

Two were highly popular, at Remic Rapids and Confederation Park. One, planned for Patterson Creek, ran into opposition from nearby residents and was never installed. It has made another application for a liquor licence for this summer, however.

But costs have run unexpectedly high, as shown in results of an access to information request by Wendy Myers, who lives near Patterson Creek.

The plan presented to the NCC’s executive management committee in late 2017 looked rosy. Financial details show the following:

Proposed capital budget of $60,000 for each of five shipping containers, a total outlay of $300,000 by the NCC;

Gross sales for the five bistros of $300,000 each, or $1.5 million total;

Based on a rent of seven per cent of total sales, the NCC would earn $105,000 a year;

Payback to the NCC in three years.

Overall, the project would “demonstrate design excellence at an economical cost.”

At the time, 10 sites were in the running, some of them a distance from the city centre — Mer Bleue

Conservation Area, Champlain Lookout and Pink Lake.

“The eco-friendly, sustainable cafés will bring new life to existing properties. The prospect of a novel initiative will bring new visitors to otherwise overlooked sites,” the summary for the executive management says. It asks the committee to approve a $300,000 budget.

But by 2018, the documents show the project and its budget were shifting.

It now proposed four cafés instead of five, with costs of $100,000 each, totalling $400,000.

In March 2019, planners had cut back to three bistros but were asking for an extra $95,000, totalling $495,000. Operating costs (washrooms, waste disposal and a water supply) were extra. Owing to a late start in the season, 2019 revenues would be lower than forecast, but the project brief still promises “a new source of revenue generation.” Doing nothing “would result in a lost revenue opportunity.”

By last summer, the communications plan for the bistros had another set of numbers, with costs up dramatically and revenue now in some trouble.

“Total anticipated costs of the project will be approximately $700K for all 3 sites,” it says. And the project “will not be a highly significant source of revenue.”

A later draft communications plan, the seventh in a series, repeats a question about revenues in the Q and A, but the answer only discusses the “amazing sites of the NCC” and the local vendors. Revenue isn’t mentioned.

There were other internal obstacles to the project.

Someone was supposed to have advance talks with neighbours at Patterson Creek, but somehow the

NCC missed that part. The neighbours mounted strong opposition.

And a report from the NCC’s ombudsman hints at uneven work on the project. It says: “Interviews conducted revealed different views about the pathway and the pace of project development. Some NCC interviewees indicated the existence of a clear project path, and others stated the project reached too far into 2019, complicating the co-ordination of project development and public consultations. Some NCC interviewees characterized the project as one of ‘fits and starts.’”

For example, seven days before the heavy machinery started work last June, discussions between the NCC and city hall about a temporary zoning change at Patterson Creek were just getting underway.

The NCC did not respond to the Citizen’s comment request.

A veteran Ottawa restaurant owner suggests that corporate planners aren’t equipped for the food business.

“The last two decades, you need to be a true-blooded restaurateur to know the restaurant business,” said Richard Valente, who runs the Fratelli Kanata restaurant and Roberto Pizzeria on Preston Street.

“Until you’ve actually owned a (restaurant) business and sat through the best of the best times and worst of the worst times, you have no idea. I’m closed and I’ve just paid $4,200 in gas and electrical bills for one location, the Fratelli in Kanata.”

Experience teaches a restaurant owner how to avoid cost overruns.

“You scrounge and you scrape everywhere,” Valente said. “The biggest thing is learning how to save money, let alone making it.

“I’ve seen so many guys that I know in the last 20 years who decided to invest in restaurants, and not one of them ends in a good story.”