Julie Stevens is savouring every order that comes into her family’s Five Star Pizza in Nanaimo – after all, she doesn’t know how many more orders they have left.
“Until they tell us we have to go, which is Sept. 30, but we’re hoping- you never know,” Stevens tells CHEK News.
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Stevens’ homemade, stick-to-your-ribs pizzas have gained a loyal following across Vancouver Island. Yet now, the two-year-old company that Stevens says has just started to turn a profit for her family with two special-needs kids is facing imminent closure.
It is one of 17 small family businesses that share kitchen space at Rising Hope Community Kitchen on Bowen Road and have all been handed six-week eviction notices.
“There’s 17 small businesses that are being thrown to the road, is what’s happening, and that’s horrible,” says Stevens.
“I mean we’re all going to be out of business if we don’t think of something quick,” says Zana Boyd, owner of Fridge Light Movable Feasts.
Boyd has been running her catering company out of the Rising Hope Community Kitchen for three years and says the sudden evictions have blindsided renters.
“Things have been going great. Now the bottom just got pulled out from underneath us, and we’re having to think really fast,” says Boyd.
Island Crisis Care Society operates the Rising Hope Community Kitchen. The non-profit provides support for people experiencing homelessness.
Ted Pahl, ICCS’ executive director, told CHEK News on Sunday that the kitchen has been losing hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past three years.
In a statement issued online, Island Crisis Care Society says: “Rising costs of operating, aging equipment in need of significant reinvestment, and funding that hasn’t kept pace with those costs have made the program unsustainable to continue.”
“It’s been really sweet in here honestly and it’s going to be really sad to miss all these people,” says Shai Whitehead, an employee at Five Star Pizza.
“You just kicked 17 businesses out; 17 families, you just kicked to the road. Where do we go? What do we do?” says Stevens.
The group of evicted businesses is now urgently searching for an Island Health-approved kitchen space before the Sept. 30 deadline.
“There was no indication whatsoever that we were going to have to leave, and to give you a letter that says six weeks from now, you gotta be out, there’s no way you can find a place,” says Stevens.
Yet Stevens and her kitchen neighbours tell CHEK News they aren’t giving up, fighting to save the small businesses they’ve built — businesses that could soon be without a home.