{"id":593789,"date":"2026-04-10T02:06:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T02:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593789\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T02:06:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T02:06:18","slug":"blue-chair-cafe-in-edmonton-will-close-after-22-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593789\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Chair Cafe in Edmonton will close after 22 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sylvia Shank has been with Blue Chair Cafe since its opening as a bookkeeper 22 years ago. She became the owner in 2020, turning it into the lively restaurant you see today.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that you know if we just had more music and did a few different things differently, it might make it a little more profitable, but that didn\u2019t work out,\u201d said Shank.<\/p>\n

After 22 years of service, this long-standing cafe will be closing down on Sunday, April 26. Ending this chapter is not an easy decision for the owner, but says it\u2019s purely financial.<\/p>\n

\u201cFood prices have gone up exponentially, gas prices \u2013 so if you get food delivered, there\u2019s always a fuel surcharge \u2026 Rent over the years has gone up, so everything goes up, but you can\u2019t pass all the direct costs onto your customers, or it\u2019ll just be out of reach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Inside Blue Chair Cafe. (Leo Cruzat, CityNews)<\/p>\n

The news of it shutting down is a bummer for longtime customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard, and I think we make choices with our pocketbooks every day, so I think it\u2019s important for us always to support local businesses rather than chains,\u201d said Ione Challborn, a customer.<\/p>\n

Construction and redevelopment are also issues Shank is facing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve also noticed a strain with 76th Avenue, which has been closed for so long, plus it\u2019s going to be closed again next year; they\u2019re putting a bike lane in,\u201d Shank explained.<\/p>\n

The cafe is big on featuring local musical talents. For one artist, she says it became a launchpad for emerging artists in the city, and seeing it go is bad news.<\/p>\n

\"\"Inside Blue Chair Cafe. (Leo Cruzat, CityNews)<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like venues right now \u2013 music venues in Edmonton are kind of dropping like flies, like we\u2019re losing them and we\u2019re short of them. So, for one that has been around for so long, after a while, they start to feel like institutions, you know what I mean. And so for one that\u2019s been around for so long to be going away. It\u2019s not a good feeling,\u201d said Dana Wylie, the lead singer of Secondhand Dreamcar.<\/p>\n

During the lunch hour, one customer CityNews spoke to was devastated hearing that another local business and live music cafe was closing down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very disappointed that the restaurant is closing. It\u2019s been a fixture in this neighbourhood,\u201d said Challborn.<\/p>\n

Despite putting on a curtain call to the cafe, Shank is hoping a new one will emerge and continue the live music cafe in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never know what the future might bring. You never know. Might be able to work something through somewhere else, you never know,\u201d said Shank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sylvia Shank has been with Blue Chair Cafe since its opening as a bookkeeper 22 years ago. She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-593789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}