Pivot Café Closes In Uptown Saint John

Less than a year after a rebranding, the uptown core in Saint John will be losing another business due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pivot Studio and Café opened in November after owner Ingrid Woodhouse renovated the Water Street location and rebranded from the former BunkHaus Hostel and Uptowner Café.

Woodhouse made the announcement in a Facebook post on the company’s page on Tuesday, writing about the challenges with staying open during the pandemic.

“It’s been one hell of a battle trying to stay afloat during this pandemic,” wrote Woodhouse. “Without your support through staying at the hostel, buying items at the cafe, getting memberships and buying event tickets, we wouldn’t have made it this far.”

Woodhouse first opened the former BunkHaus hostel in the summer of 2018, opening the cafe later that year.

In an email to Huddle, Woodhouse wrote her business has struggled since the pandemic began in March 2020. With a lack of tourism, she swapped out the hostel and added a pole studio and event space.

“We had an incredible first month,” wrote Woodhouse. “We blew projections out of the water and things were finally looking up. But then the lockdowns came and we lost all that success and momentum overnight.”

Six months after the Saint John region left in the red and orange phases, Woodhouse said Pivot was still feeling the effects of those lockdowns. She says the company had a huge loss last year and was only continuing to hit around 50 percent of its breakeven each month.

Woodhouse tried several options to stay open, including adding more seating, bringing in products from businesses like Montreal Bagels and Nela’s Kitchen and applying for loans and grants.

That included grants from the provincial government, which couldn’t help as many small businesses like Pivot. Woodhouse explained profit margins are so tiny that it speaks to the province’s “lack of compassion.”

“That $5,000 loan [was] literally pennies to a brick-and-mortar business, and then they put so many rules around access that I couldn’t even qualify for it and neither could many other businesses who needed it,” wrote Woodhouse.

However, Woodhouse was able to qualify for federal support through the Canada Emergency Work Subsidy, the Canada Emergency Business Account and the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy. But because her business did better after the summer, she didn’t qualify for them anymore.

Despite having to watch her business close, Woodhouse says she feels relieved to move on from the business world. She’ll return to an engineering job she had before Covid-19 and joining her husband when he returns to Saint John from the United States.

“I know I gave it my all and that this failure was totally outside my control,” wrote Woodhouse. “I have no regrets, though. I’m glad I’m not going to live my life wondering ‘what if.’ I tried, I failed and I learned a lot.”

Woodhouse says she has enjoyed meeting locals and travellers and getting to experience “the rollercoaster” of entrepreneurship. She encourages Saint Johners to support local businesses when they can and get a Covid-19 vaccine.

“Get vaccinated, I don’t care what your cousin Frank says in Toronto,” she wrote.

With files from Elizabeth MacLeod, Hannah Rudderham, Cherise Letson and Mark Leger.

This story was written by Aaron Sousa, a summer intern for Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.