It’s been confirmed that Restaurant Chez Nous has closed its doors for good and filed for Bankruptcy.
Owner’s Paul McAllister and Ryan Julien could not be reached for comment, but the kitchen equipment was moved out of the building this week and notices of bankruptcy were released.
I think that corner is cursed although the Mr. Shepherd’s Pie concept probably never had a chance.
The high cost of renovations; aquiring their liqour licence and the injury to their chef made the chances of success very hard.
In the Cornwall market there are a handful of very successful restaurants and it’s hard to break in.
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As one of the owners of Chez Nous, I am very sad that we were not as accepted into the community as quickly as we hoped. This building is cursed as many customers in the last 3 weeks were walking out due to the heat inside. the air conditioning was just not able to work enough to keep the dinning room cool. Customers would arrive, order a drink and meal and then cancel the meal as it was over 30 degrees inside. Also the rotting wall near the kitchen exit also didn’t help us either. We closed once for a roof leak which was not fixed but patched and also the closure due to our former chef injury.
We also had a lot of trouble getting help from the city. Cornwall is big on talk about wanting to help people come to cornwall to open a business, but offer NO programs for company start ups. For sure if you own your business building, your set for many incentives, but reality is that people like us (start ups) don’t have that much money to buy a building. All the permits a company needs are very costly and there are no breaks for us. If you have it “in” with the city, they make sure to make things even harder. The landlord of Chez Nous is well known by the city by their own admission and we were not too surprised to have many road block put up for us either.
Any how, there are many reasons that we could not make it in Cornwall and perhaps Cornwall is just not “new business” friendly for a non-franchise company to open in.
We have a great town that we could do so much with, but the reality is the Minority of Cornwall seem to run the roost. Any small change is very scary to them and it’s the youth that suffer and leave Cornwall as there is nothing for them here. We need more elected officials that actually take action to make Cornwall better and progress, not leave it stuck in the ice age.
Thank you to all of those who came to Chez Nous. our latest food and new Chef was a much needed hit for us, but we just could not keep the doors open. A special thanks to our staff. We would not have been anything with out Chef Cyr, Sou-chef Tyler (and former sou-chef Vaughan), Diane and Joanne.
It was a good try, in a tough market.
And true, it’s a market made tougher by city administration. The city with a ”stuck in gear unless you’ve got some grease” system.
Don’t worry about the kids, they head off to Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto.
Pity. Heard about it but never went there. The idea of going into Cornwall for a “night on the town” is just too depressing to even contemplate.