One can be forgiven for presuming that, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurateurs, bar and nightclub owners would happily break their leases to stop hemorrhaging money.<\/p>\n
Turns out, not only are they bravely prepared to wait out the pandemic, hordes of business people are trying to find venues to open up their own nightspots and eateries. Tel Aviv-native Tomer Markovitz is exploring venues in Toronto\u2019s downtown and central midtown to open a restaurant that will serve what he calls Israeli street food, mostly of a vegetarian variety.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a very specific type of venue that I\u2019m looking for. I\u2019ve seen a lot of places in the past year. People are stealing locations,\u201d said Markovitz. \u201cI\u2019ve started a few conversations with landlords but I\u2019m still waiting for the right price. Before the pandemic you could easily do 300 to 500 customers in a day in the downtown core, but in the middle of the pandemic no money comes in, and if you\u2019re a new business you don\u2019t get a government subsidy.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, despite razor thin margins in the best of times, many restaurateurs are willing to wait out the pandemic because they\u2019re , and while indoor dining isn\u2019t an option, food delivery services like Uber Eats are helping keep them afloat.<\/p>\n
Chi Real Estate Group, a hospitality-oriented real estate team, has a stable of prospective restaurateurs looking for venues in Toronto, but according to Ori Grad, Chi\u2019s broker and managing director, finding availabilities is harder than one would think in the midst of a pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cInventory is low. There\u2019s huge demand right now of people looking to buy buildings with restaurants in them, and one thing we\u2019re seeing with COVID is it\u2019s creating opportunity that would never have existed without a pandemic,\u201d said Grad. \u201cThere are old operators looking to retire and certain newcomers getting into the market that never would have.\u201d<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t always the case, he added. Tom Jones Steak House, one of the oldest establishments of its kind in Toronto, was on the market and recently sold. Additionally, the famed Rivoli on Queen St. W. hit the market during the first couple of months of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the beginning, we had more people trying to get out of the business. We were getting calls from restaurants every day talking about how they needed to stop the bleeding,\u201d said Grad. \u201cBut people always have wanted to hold on. This is their livelihood and most restaurants don\u2019t have six months\u2019 rainy day funds.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the moment, there\u2019s demand for cheap kitchens, \u201cghost\u201d kitchens, and outdoor patio space. Grad also notes that Queen St. E. is receiving a lot of interest\u2014not hard to believe considering that it\u2019s on the verge of a .<\/p>\n
One thing appears apparent: given how much demand and how little inventory Chi Real Estate Group has, Toronto could very well be on the cusp of its own version of the Roaring Twenties when the pandemic is over. Unlike Montreal and New York, cities that are renowned for their food and nightlife, Toronto has traditionally been a more subdued counterpart, but that could soon change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a couple of guys aggressively looking for nightclubs, and they were outbid by another group,\u201d said Grad. \u201cWhen the pandemic\u2019s behind us, we\u2019re going to have the Roaring Twenties here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One can be forgiven for presuming that, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurateurs, bar and nightclub owners would happily break their leases to stop hemorrhaging money. Turns out, not only are they bravely prepared to wait out the pandemic, hordes of business people are trying to find venues to open up their own nightspots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23414,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9071\/revisions\/23414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}