Sudbury restaurant shutting down due to pandemic aftermath

The owners of a restaurant in downtown Sudbury said they are being forced to close, and are blaming, in part, the drop in business during COVID.

A restaurant in downtown Sudbury is closing next month.

In a social media post last week, Knowhere Public House said it will be shutting down as of Aug. 23.

“It has been a very difficult decision,” said co-owner Bill Crumplin.

“Kaitlin and I have wrestled with it a long time.”

Crumplin and Kaitlin Lutyk have owned the pub for four years. Lutyk met Crumplin when she worked at another bar downtown and they became friends after sharing similar political views.

“We got together over a couple beers and kind of instantly became friends,” she said.

“We shared that we both wanted to open a little pub one day. And so that’s kind of how it happened.”

Lutyk said a combination of business and personal matters influenced their decision.

Personal challenges

“This spring, my father passed away and I had been spending the past year with him, fighting cancer,” she said.

“Right after we had his celebration of life, we discovered that Bill needed open heart surgery.”

Initially, Crumplin said they had high hopes for the business due to its proximity to the Sudbury Courthouse and the Clarion Hotel. But the pandemic changed things.

“We expected walk-in traffic,” he said.

“The hotel became half hospital recovery for all of COVID, and they’re still working to try to change it from a hospital back to a hotel. And the courthouse, the judges became accustomed to Zoom hearings. So some of the walk-in traffic that we were expecting never did manifest itself.”

Crumplin said that economic uncertainty is also leading to fewer people going out to restaurants.

“People are working from home. They don’t want to go back to the office and that’s another chunk of the market that has evaporated for us.”

Added to those challenges is the general perception of downtown Sudbury, which isn’t positive.

“Some of the reasons (customers) have not come downtown is they don’t feel comfortable downtown,” Crumplin said.

‘We’re being abandoned’

“And that’s very frustrating because as private business owners -- and it’s not just us, it’s everybody -- it feels like we’re being abandoned, that nobody cares about the people on the street or the people who have invested their hard-earned money in trying to make the downtown something special.”

Milena Stanoeva, senior director of public affairs and communications with Restaurants Canada, said many restaurant owners are facing similar challenges.

“Pre-pandemic, 12 per cent of restaurants were telling us that they were operating at a loss or just breaking even. Now that number is 53 per cent. That’s a very big jump,” Stanoeva said.

She said fuelling the problems is a post-pandemic shift in dining trends.

“People kind of stopped going out to eat and it became less of a daily habit, but also, a lot of costs have gone up and have stayed up,” Stanoeva said.

“Anything from insurance to labour costs to food costs to rent and utilities, has increased by in the range of 20 per cent over the past two years, which is taking a big bite out of profitability.”

She added that restaurant owners are bearing a lot more social responsibility.

On the front lines

“Restaurants are basically at the front lines of a lot of social issues like crime, mental health crises,” Stanoeva said.

“More and more of them are concerned about safety issues for their staff and their patrons. It’s a very complex issue and it is making it harder for restaurants, especially in the downtown core, to keep attracting their core customer base who might not feel comfortable going in these environments.”

Crumplin said that since sharing the news of the restaurant’s closure on social media, there’s been an outpouring of support.

“This place has become a third spot for many people and a number of our clients have become close friends -- and we really appreciate that,” he said.

“It’s great to hear and to read, because it means that what we saw is a gap in the city and downtown, we did do a good job of addressing that gap.”

Both encourage the community to continue supporting local businesses when possible.

“We just know how important that is for a healthy, thriving community,” Lutyk said.

“And it also creates vibrancy because we’re all taking care of each other, and we’re talking about the products that we’re growing or making, and these are really passionate people who also want to contribute something great to their community.”

Crumplin and Lutyk said they are grateful to their staff and the community for supporting them over the years.

They said there will be lots of live music, including Up Here performances, leading up to the last day they are open.