For season 6 of ‘Yes, We Are Open’, Al heads west to Alberta! His first stop is Prince’s Island in Calgary, an urban oasis located on the Bow River. The island park is primarily accessible by a number of footbridges. It is home to playgrounds, walking paths, several outdoor activities & festivals, and one notable business, River Café. Sal Howell is the owner of the café, which started as a park concession. In 1995, Sal transformed the open-air space into a must-see year-round dining experience. For the last 30 years, River Café has served up cuisine from ingredients indigenous to the region, but a couple of major floods in the city, one in 2005 and an even bigger one in 2013 threatened to wash all of that away. This is Sal’s story.
You can learn more about River Café at river-cafe.com.
YWAO River Cafe Transcript
Allan: [00:00:00] Welcome on board Air Canada flight 149, service to Calgary. We're all set to go up front. We should be pushing back on schedule. March 2024. And as you've heard, I'm on a flight to Calgary. Thank you for joining me for another season. This is your first episode. Thank you for checking it out. I hope you enjoy it and go back and listen to previous episodes.
There are a lot of great stories already told from many different parts of this country as I make my way to every province and territory.
After spending the last two seasons of the podcast, traveling Eastern Canada, enjoying everything it has to offer. It's now time to, as the village people once said, go West. It'll be my first time in Alberta, and I'm really looking forward to it. I've got some interesting businesses lined up for you this season with really cool stories to tell.
Stories of how they got started, their greatest struggles, and how they overcame those struggles. They're good news stories of hard earned lessons, perseverance, and success. Hopefully you'll find some inspiration for yourself in these stories, [00:01:00] and perhaps dare to dream of one day starting your own business, if you haven't already.
So, settle in for 8 news stories over the next 8 weeks. I'm Al Grego, and this is Season 6 of Yes, We Were Open Podcast. www. yeswewereopenpodcast. com
Before I begin with this week's story, I just have to share an amusing thing that happened literally minutes after I stepped off the plane in Calgary. I went to pick up my car at the rental counter in the airport. Usually I reserve a compact car, nothing fancy. At home I drive a Kia so I'm used to small cars.
The gentleman at the counter took one look at me and told me a compact car wouldn't do. Now I barely had time to process how I should take that comment before he gave me a set of keys. and told me he upgraded me at no extra charge. I thought, cool! First upgrade! I went to the parking garage and hit the unlock button on my FOB and couldn't believe what blinked back at [00:02:00] me.
A grey, half ton Dodge Ram pickup truck. This thing was so big, I had to climb up into it. I could touch the ceiling of the parking garage while sitting in it. It was a far cry from my Kia Rio at home. But hey, when in Rome, I guess. It took me a while to get used to my new dimensions on the road. I'll forever call this the Alberta Upgrade.
Everyone I told about the upgrade told me once I got used to the truck, I'd never want to go back to driving a car. While it was fun driving for a bit, especially through the mountains, I'm happy to be back in my Kia. Parking that thing was not fun, especially in the city. Anyway, back to this week's story.
It's an unseasonably warm, sunny March day, so, with Bigfoot carefully parked in a nearby city lot, I'm literally going for a walk in the park right now. Specifically, Prince's Island Park, located in downtown Calgary. As the name suggests, the park is actually an island on the Bow River. It wasn't always an island.
In 1886, a man named Peter Anthony Prince relocated [00:03:00] from Quebec to Calgary and founded the Bow River and Eau Claire lumber companies. He constructed a sawmill on the Bow River Embankment and dug a channel to help transport logs. This channel eventually created the island known today as Prince's Island, named after Peter himself.
Today, both lumber companies are long gone, but the city developed the park in the 1950s as an urban oasis. While there is restricted vehicle access, primarily folks access the park via a number of footbridges. The 20 hectare island features picnic areas, a playground, gardens, cross country skiing, and outdoor skating in the winter, and it's part of the pathway and hiking trail system lining both sides of the Bow River.
It also plays host to a number of festivals and events. As I walk one of those trails, there are many other people out with me walking. Jogging and biking, taking full advantage of the island is the perfect escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. There's no traffic or noise pollution, just the footsteps and the whirs and bells of bicycles and the odd barking dog.
In fact, there are no businesses on the [00:04:00] island, save for one, nestled in the middle of some trees overlooking the lagoon. That business is where I'm headed right now, in the subject of this week's episode, River Café.
As I walk up the path to River Café's entrance, I get a bit of a cabin in the woods meets chalet feel, with wood slatted walls and stonework chimneys, and the name of the café almost crudely spelled out with thick branches on the front and side. But the front entrance is far from cabin like. It's a large arched double door, and as I walk through the door and into the large dining area, the mood shifts significantly.
Gone are the quiet sounds of the park, replaced by light jazz music, and the sounds of a few diners having a late lunch, and the staff preparing for dinner service. The decor can best [00:05:00] be described as rustic elegance. Post and beam construction, a large stone fireplace in the corner across from the bar and kitchen adds coziness, and there's a lot to look at on the walls from snowshoes to boats and assorted fishing paraphernalia.
The stools and chairs look to be constructed from thick tree branches. Again, rustic, but not dark, thanks to plenty of large windows on the north and south sides of the building. In fact, the entire south wall is windowed, overlooking the lagoon with great views of the city of Calgary on the other side.
Hi,
Sal: Al. Hi, I'm Sal. Nice to meet you, I'm Al. Nice to meet you. This is, uh, Bruce. Bruce!
Allan: That's Sal, the owner. She greets me and introduces me to Bruce, the wine director and sommelier at River Café. They give me a tour of the restaurant, and then we settle at a table in a quiet corner to conduct our interviews.
Sal: Hi, I'm Sal Howell, and I'm the proprietor and founder of River Café.
Bruce: Hello, my name is Bruce Soley. I'm the wine director and sommelier at River Café in [00:06:00] Calgary.
Sal: I was in the restaurant business here in Calgary, and we're starting to do business I had recently graduated from university. I have a fine arts degree in painting and photography.
And I fell in love with hospitality and restaurants became my canvas.
River Café began in 1991. We discovered this amazing place. Park concession in the middle of Prince's Island Park, and it was up for tender from the city of Calgary to operate during the summer months, but we had a different idea. And we took over the space and ran an outdoor cafe. All the seating was outside and our kitchen in the old concession space.
And we did that for four summers and discovered an incredible magic operating here in the park. But, uh, when it rains in Calgary, it tends to rain sideways and quite fast. cold. So operating an outdoor restaurant in the park was not, yeah, it was certainly challenging. So we recognized an opportunity and [00:07:00] our, our city landlord was enthusiastic and we enclosed the building, rebuilt it the way you see it today.
Bruce: It's a gorgeous building. It's amazing. These beams are all original. Like they were part of the, Oh really? Yeah. But it was outdoor. Yeah. Right. Wow. It's
Sal: a hexagonal building built in the late 70s. And the big wooden beams that you see supporting a tongue groove ceiling, that was part of the original structure.
And then there was a park concession in the center, and where we're sitting right now would have been in open air. And we really took what was here, the shape of the structure, and it's kind of a funny story. Back then, we had gone back to the city, and it didn't really fit into commercial or residential, but we, uh, gave them some fairly basic drawings and explained what we wanted to do.
And then I think took that to a whole other level.
Allan: With the city's approval, Sal and her team took to constructing her vision of an indoor outdoor year round dining experience. In 1995, construction was complete. I asked her how it was received.
Sal: It was an evolution. So, we absolutely established Rivet Cafe as a [00:08:00] magical dining experience back in 1991.
It was summer only and people really looked forward to the summer season. Expanding, we thought, well, if we could shelter our tables from the elements, we could expand the season into the shoulder season. And when we rebuilt and developed into the to our vision quickly became year round. I mean, it's a beautiful window on the seasons being here in the park.
The year round was also met with a lot of skepticism. People said, well, you're crazy. Who's going to come here in the winter. And I had friends who said, Oh, I'm going to put my snowsuit on and snowshoe into the park. It quickly gained a following and people love it for all of the seasons. And it is a walk, but it's the walk.
That's part of the uniqueness. We opened in our expanded river cafe, really essentially the way that you see it, The day in June of 95 and we were packed from day one.
So River Cafe was definitely inspired by its [00:09:00] surroundings. It's an extraordinary location on an Island in the middle of the river, in the middle of the city. And you have to walk here. The setting and the natural surroundings inspire. in creating our fishing lodge atmosphere. You're surrounded by cabin treasure on the walls and a real ode to the fly fishing on the bow river for which it's very famous for the menu.
We imagined what should be on our menu should be a reflection of the surroundings as well. Back in 95. Regional seasonal local cuisine really wasn't a thing. In fact, people used to ask us, well, what kind of cuisine are you? And the typical answer out there was the various countries of origin, you know, from Italian to Chinese.
And I think what we set out to do was to source local ingredients. So imagining What swam in the river, and what grazed on the plains, and these are the ingredients we would look for.
Bruce: Well, we call it wood fired Canadian cuisine, so it used to be a lot more game, but the game isn't available, and there's issues with diseases and [00:10:00] stuff, so we stopped supporting that part of the industry, but we do have bison, we have beef, sustainable fish, locally raised non antibiotic, you know, really well looked after animals that we have, and it's all seasonal, as much as possible.
So what's your name?
Vijud: My name is Bajud. And what do you
Allan: do
Vijud: here? I am the butcher. The butcher?
Allan: Yeah. Nice. So how long have you been with River Cafe?
Vijud: Close to five years now. And what's your favorite part? The change in seasons and the ability to figure things out and the challenges that come by with using only Canadian ingredients and the things that globally, cooks generally have access to, you don't.
So you're forced to be creative. So
Allan: it was Alberta.
Sal: Alberta cuisine and what evolved into Canadian regional seasonal cuisine. Now the reality at the time in 95, there weren't very many local sources and there weren't very many direct connections from restaurants to the suppliers, the growers, producers, and ranchers.
It felt as though, and certainly the reality from our food distributors, that ingredients came from everywhere, but here. So we set out [00:11:00] to farmer's markets and went to visit farms and growers and ranches and started sourcing directly. And that developed into a really wide network of, uh, local seasonal ingredients.
And when word got out, people found us.
Bruce: This restaurant is primarily sustainable in everything we do. And we try to make all our food purchases, et cetera, as local as possible. We have been doing that actually for 30 years, whereas not a lot of people have. So in that regard, we really support local farmers and local producers and purveyors.
Allan: So you had a hand in kind of rebuilding the local supply chain first?
Sal: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a constant evolution. We connected our diners to the growers and farmers and ranches in this area. And they found new customers in the restaurant industry as a whole. Hi, Neha.
Allan: Neha, and how long have you been
Neha: working here?
I've been here close to three years. Three years, and what do you do? I'm the assistant general manager. Bye. Bye. The team, like everyone said, we have really good, fun loving, enthusiastic team. Plus, getting to see all these tourists coming [00:12:00] over and realizing, Oh, you're in the middle of an island. And that's a pretty unique experience is what we are selling them.
And I think that's what we are known for. Sustainability, following all these practices to have the earth survive a little bit longer. So, yeah. Well,
Sal: hospitality is at the very core of our business, and I think River Cafe has attracted like minds who love hospitality, guest service, and I think have been attracted to this place. It's almost taken on a character of its own.
Craig: What's your name? Craig. What do you do here? I'm the general manager. How long have you been with River Cafe?
January 2024. So, very recent. Yes, very much so. Do you enjoy working here? Yeah. For sure. It's beautiful. Great location. Good food. It's awesome. My favorite part. I just love seeing people eat and drink and have a good time with their friends and family. So that's always my favorite part.
Bruce: It's a challenge.
It's beautiful. I mean, obviously if you're in the [00:13:00] restaurant business that long, you have to like working with the public and working with people. And it's the energy of a place like this that you get addicted to that keeps you going. There's no job like it. I'm not a guy that could sit at a desk for any length of time.
I don't like to sit anywhere for very long. So it's really just. Being the perfect job for me, there's always something to do and always somewhere to go. What's your name?
Jordan: Jordan.
Allan: Jordan. What do you do?
Jordan: I am a junior sous chef here. Just over six months now.
Allan: All right, so relatively new. What do you, what's your favorite part of working here?
Jordan: Um, probably the team that we have here. We have a great group of people here. Everyone's always enthusiastic and positive and fun to work with.
Sal: What has become important about Riva Cafe or what sets it apart is not just dining here, but you. The getting here and arriving here and being here and being welcomed and feeling valued.
There's a warmth and a welcome that comes with River Cafe. What does a Somali do
Allan: other than just drink wine? Well, we have
Bruce: a [00:14:00] wine list with 550 labels, and we have a cellar with 5, 000 bottles in it. So I manage the purchasing and what goes on a list and selling it and making sure that everything flows smoothly.
Allan: Where do you get your wine from primarily? Is it all local?
Bruce: Well, there is no local wine in Alberta, but we do have a large Canadian section. So split between British Columbia and Ontario. And there are fruit wines in Alberta that we carry and use. But other than that, our wines come from all over the world.
Primarily French, Italian, Canadian, American, and then we have a good Spanish section, so it's pretty much worldwide.
Sal: I'm very grateful for this incredible setting. I think we are much loved by Calgary as a community. I think that people have chosen to support us. milestones here. There's the romance of many proposals, many weddings, many anniversaries, many [00:15:00] graduations, birthdays, and signing of deals, just life's milestones and celebrations.
The area has grown up around us, but we are surrounded by residential to the north. There's sunny side and there are communities. And so it was a real mixture. It almost to the south is, um, the downtown and to the north are these communities that are part of the downtown. So there's a real mix. And I think that's Also, we're in such a unique location.
It's not just a business traffic, it's a neighborhood traffic and a visitor traffic. So I think we've attracted people who live here, who work here and people who are visiting. And I think often it's a place where the people who live here wants to bring the people who are visiting here, whether it's for work or for pleasure.
We set out to do something really well, and this is what we did. Cafe can perhaps be misleading in the name because cafe can imply [00:16:00] it's a coffee shop or something very casual. I mean, River Cafe is very much a fine dining experience. And I think the location, there's a feeling that oh, some of the restaurants in the world that are in these beautiful locations are all about the location and maybe they're not the best restaurants.
And I think we're really surprised and delighted the people that found this place. Beautiful place that it was actually a delicious place to dine as well.
Allan: Up next, Sal's vision for a fine dining experience on Princess Island has been a tremendous success. What happens when mother nature literally rains on her parade? Putting her business underwater not once, but twice in the last 20 years, stay tuned to find out.[00:17:00]
You're listening to Yes We Are Open. Sal Howell took an outdoor concession stand in Calgary's Prince's Island Park and turned it into one of the city's premier dining experiences. But what Sal wasn't aware of was that the thing that made River Cafe special, it's location, would become the very thing that would threaten to drown her business, literally.
How did she get through it? Let's find out. What was your biggest struggle today, Sal?
Sal: Yeah, we didn't see this coming, but the first time that we experienced a traumatic flooding event was in 2005. Our wettest month of the year is June, and we'd had solid rain all through. May and through June, the ground was saturated and the rain just kept coming and coming.
And in about the third week of June in 2005, we were notified that there could be some overland flooding on the island. [00:18:00] That didn't seem There could be some overland flooding on the island, but what happened during that time, which we hadn't really anticipated, was we lost power. The causeway that allows for vehicles to access onto the island was washed away.
That didn't seem so terrible until we discovered that the sewer lines and the power lines were contained within the causeway. We worked collaboratively with the city. We got back up and running back in 2005 relatively easy. They put in some emergency power. We put in, uh A new sewer system, all these things happened and away we went.
We learned that there was a vulnerability here and that was a blessing for what was yet to come. In
Bruce: 2013,
Sal: I'm not sure whether they really call it the hundred year flood, there could be a bigger one out there, but what there was [00:19:00] a flood on a scale that we could never have imagined.
Bruce: Uh, it was, uh Perfect storm actually. Most prevalent storms come out of the north northwest and if they do come out of the south which means up from the northwest states so heavily laden with moisture and it butted up against the mountains and it dumped something like almost 300 milliliters of rain in three nights and our average rainfall for June is 90 milliliters and that's our rainiest month.
So we got Two years worth of rain in pretty much three days. It was so intense that it changed the hydrology of the whole, these slopes of the mountains. There's rivers where they didn't used to be, outflows where they didn't used to be. It was crazy, like unbelievable.
Sal: I think I was naive in thinking that I understood what a flood would look like because of 2005.
And we had a few inches of water, which was very easy to clean up. The news was starting to report that the mountain communities in Canmore, further up the mountain, We're having this catastrophic event, [00:20:00] and yet the sun was shining, it wasn't raining, and nothing seemed to be very wrong here, except there was this massive volume of water headed our way.
Allan: The
Bruce: cause wasn't here, it was elsewhere. It
Sal: was elsewhere, and it was heading.
Bruce: So that came down, and there's, I think, Eleven dams on the Boas tributaries before it even hits Calgary and most of them are flood controlled. They're hydro, but they're built to prevent that from happening and they're completely overwhelmed.
Sal: The island disappeared. We were given notice of a few hours.
Well we thought that, you know, oh well, the worst that could happen is um, we'll get a few inches of water and we'll get everything up off the floor. So it'll make our cleanup really easy and everything's going to be okay. What I didn't realize was, uh, the water would be over our heads in the lower level and nothing would be okay.
Much later on, we left on Thursday around five o'clock and we were already knee deep in water in the lower level. [00:21:00] And our friend, the foreman in parks asked us, are you ready? I have to turn the power off. And we're like, okay. And then the water came over. We watched it come over the park, the grass. And, and it was at that moment that I realized.
Oh, this is very different than 2005. We'd watched both happen, and this was coming much faster, and furiously, we had to stop and step away, lock the door, hope for the best, we stood a little bit beside the restaurant but on higher ground, watched for a while, I think had a good cry.
Allan: Both Sal and Bruce showed me aerial photographs of the scene, and they weren't exaggerating.
The island was gone, and all you can see were treetops and the roof of River Café. Their only saving grace was that the water never came up high enough to breach their dining room, but their entire lower level was submerged.
Bruce: We had eight and a half feet of water in the basement, so it completely wiped out our lower level where We have all our walk in fridges, storage, wine cellar.
We lost 2, 500 bottles of wine. We saved 2, 500 bottles of wine. Lost [00:22:00] all the food, all the storage, all the dry storage. Everything had to be ripped out right down to the concrete.
Sal: The river peaked about midnight on Saturday night. I could watch from the side. Southbanks of the lagoon, just away from the restaurant.
And I would come as often as I could. It was very difficult to get through the downtown. It was very difficult to get around the city.
Bruce: The
Sal: city was in a major crisis. Power had been shut off in the downtown for days. The water was raging across the island for days.
Allan: Sal and her team didn't just stand by and watch it happen, though.
With 2005 still fresh in their memories, they knew what needed to be done. So rather than wait to see the aftermath, they sprang into action to try to save their restaurant.
Sal: You know, because of 2005, we also understood what a recovery would look like and what did we need. Because of 2005, we were [00:23:00] insured for this kind of event and that was a blessing too, because in 2005, I don't think we'd quite realized what was possible.
We were calling our broker and And we were establishing that this event was taking place and that it was going to be quite catastrophic. I think before many people realized that their neighborhood was flooding, we'd had an adjuster assigned to us, like we were moving quickly. We were also calling around and gearing up with remedial equipment.
We were securing pumps and shop vacs and rubber gloves and boots. And when you're used to being busy in a very busy kind of business, you're also used to doing, we're all doing. So we want to do things and we want to be prepared. So it was something that we could do,
Bruce: but if that 2005 flood didn't happen, it would have been a lot worse.
If you can imagine it being worse in 2013, in that all the infrastructure had been replaced in 2005 and put deeper underground and more resistant. So as a result of that, when we did flood [00:24:00] so heavily in 2013, a lot of that stuff was intact. So it made a huge difference. Otherwise we probably wouldn't have closed for over a year as it was, we were closed for 53 days, I think.
Sal: We didn't get into address our own situation for a few days. In the meantime, we like to stay busy, so we deployed all our remedial equipment and we pumped out basements of houses all around us where I live, which is near the Elbow River. The elbow went down before the boat, and so we were helping everywhere we could.
And it's an extraordinary time. I mean,
Allan: yeah, times like these is when people get together and
Sal: work together. It really, it is an extraordinary thing. And I think that I'm not alone in looking back at the flood as having some incredible silver linings and the biggest being how people come together and how the community looks out for each other and people help and support one another.
It's a beautiful thing.
Bruce: And then. By the time peak flood was over and it passed on a Monday morning, [00:25:00] we came in and there's probably 16 inches of mud all over this entire island.
Sal: The silt and the debris and the contamination, I mean, the entire lower level had to be gutted and there was so much waste, we'd lost power.
So all of our perishable inventory had to be removed. It was a very difficult cleanup here because we were using the footbridge and we couldn't bring heavy equipment or trucks over the footbridge. We were essentially filling up a bin and dragging it by hand to coordinate a pickup. And of course, everybody in the city needed to pick up.
Bruce: Yeah. and it was a challenge because everybody, their dog needs a new fridge. Everybody, everybody needs walk-ins built, everybody needs this, that, and other thing for all the other restaurants that are wiped out. Right? Right. So trying to reopen, there's a lot of challenges just getting the place rebuilt because everybody's in the same boat.
Right. Hundreds and hundreds of houses flooded. Can't imagine. Yeah. So contractors, workers, just trying to get all that stuff coordinated was [00:26:00] just a massive undertaking.
Sal: But there was no greater bonding exercise than to all of us come back into the restaurant that we love and work together to clean it up, to, um, do what we could and bring in all the professional help we needed to rebuild and get back.
We rallied and we moved quickly and we put in place all the pieces that we needed, and we sort of looked at what was ahead. And there was a wedding in August that was on our books and it became important to reopen for this wedding and this couple who we were in constant communication and it was sort of a rallying point for us that we had to open for Nicole and Farid's wedding.
Wedding. And, and we did.
Bruce: The support was amazing. We were, went from zero to a thousand miles an hour in a matter of an hour. Were you able to get your staff back? Uh, most of them came back. We didn't have all the infrastructure in yet because like I said, [00:27:00] everybody's waiting for a walk in fridge to be built. So we actually ran the restaurant for two weeks, I think, out of a compound out the back door with rented fridges and storage and a security guard behind a fence.
So everything we needed, we. We had to run back outside, out the back door and, you know, there's an ice machine back there working. It was crazy. Yeah. In the middle of summer.
Sal: It was well covered. I've never had more news interviews around the flood. Bad news travels really fast. And the good news of a reopening, not so much.
So we thought, well, when we were getting closer to opening, how can we put the spotlight back on River Cafe and Calgary's recovery? Because this news had traveled all over the world. And we. We decided to create an event on relaunching and we called it our flood of support to honor and thank all the people that helped us.
We invited people down, we gave out these scarves that said flood of support and the most iconic picture of the flood was seeing River Cafe on the island where the island had disappeared and all you see is the rooftop of [00:28:00] River Cafe and we thought what if we surrounded the restaurant with people instead of the water and reshot that picture and that's exactly what happened.
So thousands of people came out, we had them all around the restaurant and, um, the global one came over to take the picture. This is a picture of Nicole and Fahid, the wedding that we were. And then it wasn't too much longer than it became a story in the archives of Rubic Cafe. And we were back to normal, but one that I think there were some valuable lessons learned and an extraordinary time and an extraordinary response.
Allan: After the break. We find out what the future holds for river cafe.
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Allan: Welcome back to Yes, We Are Open. It's been over a decade since the southern Alberta floods. Any sign of the devastation is long gone. In fact, there's plenty of new development happening across the footbridge to the south of River Cafe, but the island remains a haven for outdoor activity and of course, fine dining.
So what does the future look like for River Cafe? So, let's talk about the future of River Cafe.
Sal: I think River Cafe is a unique restaurant that is a stand alone restaurant and it's where it belongs. Um, you know, I think we're a bunch of artists who love what we do and where we are and how [00:30:00] we do it.
There's never a day goes by that we're not thinking how do we do what we do just that little bit better. I mean, there's all this innovation. in restaurants even and retail where you can shop from home, you can order food from anywhere and have it show up at your door. But I think there's still going to be a tremendous amount of value with a place that you can come to and enjoy that pleasure of a natural environment and the idea of coming together and gathering and being face to face with other humans.
Bruce: Well, it's always been an adventure and And we're at the top of our game and we try to be at the top of our game for as long as we've been open so, you know, just being surrounded by people that you love working with and meeting tourists from all over the world on a regular basis and being in an oasis in the middle of a 1.
6 million person city is pretty amazing. So it's a great place to come in to work every day.
Sal: How do I feel? Well, I'm, I have enormous fun. Pride over what we've been able to [00:31:00] accomplish as a team. I love how this has evolved. It's certainly not the product of one person. And I love the collaboration that the Rivet Cafe community is all about.
Yeah, it makes me very happy. I sometimes feel anxious and there's so many layers of the business to tend to. And when I'm away from the restaurant and at a desk and thinking about all the business aspects, and then when I come to the restaurant and walk in in the morning and open up the door and walk in and experience that walk in.
in the park is transformational, and the magic of being here, it reminds me what it's all about.
Allan: All right, guys, is River Cafe open? Yes, we are open! Excellent. That's the story of River Cafe. Experience. Preparation. Resilience. There isn't [00:32:00] just one lesson that can be learned from a natural disaster like a 100 year flood. There were likely hundreds of small lessons learned every day along the way. But they all likely fell into one of those three buckets.
If you take River Cafe as a microcosm of Southern Albertans, then you saw the experience they gained from the flood in 2005. And the preparation that followed when faced with the prospect of another flood, which led to the resilience on display when they didn't wallow in their misfortune, but instead sprang into action.
Adversity comes in so many forms, you don't need a natural disaster to test the resilience of your business, but you should embrace every chance you get to learn from adversity and prepare for it in the future. That is what will ultimately lead to resilience. Having said that, after everything Sal and her team at River Cafe have been through, I'd say any other adversity would just be a walk in the park.
Yes, We Were Open is a Menares Podcast production. I'd like to thank [00:33:00] Neha, Bajid, and Jordan, Craig, Scott, Bruce, and Sal for taking the time to share their story. You can learn more about River Cafe at river cafe. com. You can follow them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube at River Cafe, YYC. Please support this podcast by writing us a review on Apple podcasts or rate us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're a Canadian small business owner or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at podcast at Menares. com. Tune in next week for another. business struggle and survival on the Yes, We Are Open podcast. I'm Al Grego. Thank you for listening.