After 14 years, I am going to be taking a break from the shop. A real one. Which I know is going to be a huge bummer for a lot of folks, and understand that—it’s a bummer to me as well! It wasn’t a decision that I came to quickly or easily. This spring and summer will be the first time since 2010 where you will likely not see me out at Veg Events as a vendor. It’s an emotional announcement for me, as this shop and this business, and all of you who have supported it and me vicariously through it have meant the world to me.
As a business we are no strangers to the concept of changing directions. We’ve done it more than most places. We started as a “me” and a folding table At farmer’s markets in 2010. In 2013 our first location was a bakery in Mirvish Village until we lost the battle with the condo developers after Honest Ed’s got sold, and we moved up to Bloor St in 2015 and reinvented ourselves as a by the slice Pizza Shop. We had multiple locations and our bar running upstairs when Covid hit us like a brick in 2020. We closed both our brick and mortar locations by the end of 2021. We held on doing markets, veg fests all over southern Ontario, and delivery, pick up orders, frozen pizza and more.
Whatever my next move is, I need to regroup and stand back to see it. I want to work on a cookbook maybe, or figure out a way to get back to a storefront somewhere, or something else! Maybe all of that. Whatever it is I know I can’t get there from here and so I have decided that I need to go down to go up, and I hope that everyone knows how much I appreciate each and every one of you, and how much I look forward to sharing with you whatever is going to come next.
Thank you sincerely from the bottom of my little Garbage Hobbit heart.
Jen