David Taylor serves a giant sandwich. He’s apologizing to the individuals and businesses he hurt. (Selina S. photo)
The restaurant owner who skipped town leaving thousands of dollars in unpaid bills is now apologizing to those he’s hurt.
David Taylor, who operated Tranquility Café in the former Regal Ridge building until the end of September, contacted the Osoyoos Times on Friday to express remorse.
“I wish to extend my deepest and sincere apology to those that were impacted by our bankruptcy, the employees and suppliers that diligently worked with us and that were hurt by our failure,” Taylor wrote in an email. “I wish to extend my condolence and deepest sorrow for the mess that was left behind.”
In a subsequent 20-minute telephone interview from Calgary, where he is now living, Taylor gave his side of the story.
Taylor said he’s now in the process of filing for bankruptcy, he has no income and the negative publicity resulting from his abrupt departure will now make it difficult to get work.
Last week the Osoyoos Times reported that Taylor left the Tranquility Café and the concession at the Sun Bowl Arena in a mess and failed to pay landlords, suppliers and employees. He also cancelled a contract to deliver lunches to Osoyoos Elementary School just hours before lunchtime, leaving the school scrambling to feed hungry children.
But Taylor says a steep drop-off of business at the beginning of September, combined with “a tragic emergency” at the end of September, which he won’t discuss, triggered the unfortunate chain of events.
“We struggled all through September to get sales up and get some marketing,” said Taylor. “I was working from 1 a.m. until 8 or 9 p.m. every day, seven days a week, trying to get it going. We struggled with employees and we struggled with just about every aspect of the business.”
Taylor said that when tourism fell off at the start of September, his sales dropped in half.
“We did have a small local following and some tourists were coming in, but it wasn’t near the amount of money that we needed to continue with the bills and the rents and so on,” he said.
The concession at the arena didn’t generate enough income and the school contract came too late to tide him through the slow tourism season, he said.
Taylor said he’s run businesses before this without problems, but he’d never before worked in an economy so dependent on tourism.
“There’s a very, very narrow window to capitalize on anything within the tourism and hospitality industry,” he said.
Taylor took over the former Waterfall Café from owners Jane Long-Haggerty and Brian Haggerty in late June. He insists he kept up his payments to them until he was unable to make the Sept. 20 payment.
He disputes Long-Haggerty’s claim that she and her husband were willing to be flexible until Taylor stopped talking to them. They worked in the same building, he said, adding that they foreclosed right away.
“I was in complete contact with her,” he said.
The foreclosure meant the restaurant equipment reverted to them and it also meant he was prevented from honouring the contract to provide lunches to the school.
Both Long-Haggerty and Randy Bedard, owner of the Osoyoos Coyotes, have said Taylor left their facilities in a mess. Long-Haggerty said she found a lot of mouldy food and flies at the Tranquility Café and Bedard described the arena concession as “a pigsty” that took several days to clean.
But Taylor insists he hired and paid someone to clean up both locations, but the work wasn’t done.
“Unfortunately, obviously they took the money and ran,” he said, adding it was news to him that neither location was cleaned.
Taylor also disputes statements made about him by others who were owed money.
“I can point just as many fingers as have been pointed at me,” he said. “I can go into depth about this person did this, or they didn’t honour this contract.”
Taylor said his priority now is to repair the damage that’s been done. He has emailed some of the people he owed money to and offered an apology.
“I want to add my heartfelt apology to all those that were hurt by this,” he said at the end of the interview. “The community of Osoyoos, the school, Randy (Bedard) and the Coyotes. As far as the situation goes, it shouldn’t have happened the way it did. It breaks my heart to know that these fine people were affected by it.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
