Hole new world Osborne Village mainstay makes most of move to new digs during pandemic By: Alan Small Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Sep. 19, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/09/2020 (1838 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Toad in the Hole has a new building, a shiny new decor and a completely different and challenging environment to serve a pint of beer.

The pub, which was located at 114 Osborne St. for three decades, had become one of Winnipeg’s busiest nightspots before its lease expired at the end of 2019.

If you imagine Osborne Village as a shopping mall, the Toad, along with its whisky bar and its downstairs Cavern live-music venue, was an anchor tenant in the neighbourhood.

The Toad first opened its doors in 1990; present owners Kevin and Michael Monk bought the original Toad in the Hole in 2005. Five years ago, they purchased a new building further south, at 155 Osborne St., the old Buccacino’s restaurant location.

Plans were to renovate the interior of the building, transform the Italian restaurant and lounge into an Irish-style bar and music venue, restore some of the old place’s wooden furniture, and reopen March 17, 2020, St. Patrick’s Day. It would be a proper new revival.

And while the story says St. Patrick chased the snakes out of the Emerald Isle, it will take more than a legend to find a way to rid Earth of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that became a pandemic in March. Among the countless cancellations and postponements it caused was the opening of the Toad’s new home.

“We closed before we were told to close,” owner Kevin Monk says.

Instead, the newly renovated pub opened months later, without too much fanfare, on Canada Day weekend amid a neighbourhood, a city and a world in upheaval.

“We were used to packing them in like sardines and now that’s not the case,” Monk says. “We don’t want them packed in like sardines. The whole idea of having a club is almost foreign to what life is now.”

Life for a bar is not unlike any other business or gathering place in 2020, he says. A hand-sanitizer station greets you at the entrance. The Toad is licensed to have a capacity of 175 patrons, but less than half of that can be inside at any one time these days, owing to the pandemic. Every one of its customers are seated, including at the bar, which at the old location was famous for being jammed with people elbowing their way to the front to buy a drink during a night on the town.

But those are the old days, and the old ways of running a pub have been poured down the sink — after washing your hands for 20 seconds, of course.

“It’s been frickin’ hard, man,” Monk says. “The cost of sanitation is an expense you never had to think about before. Every squirt bottle costs me $7, do you realize that? I have 10 of them on the go at any given time.”

The decision to buy the new building and say farewell to monthly rent payments exceeding $20,000 has been the business’s lifeline, he says.

“One lucky thing is that we don’t pay rent anymore… that has helped,” he says. “We definitely would have been out of business by now. We’re not dying here on the tree.”

Monk estimates $300,000 went into renovating the old Buccacino’s location; that cost was based on business as usual once it opened in March. The Toad, like everyone else, is waiting for “the usual” to return.

“We put it out thinking we were going to instantly open when we were ready to go,” he says.

Physical-distancing regulations keep the number of people inside the bar down — Monk says 80 patrons is too many — but he says people remain leery about going to public places.

“Of course we’re doing everything COVID-compliant. It would be folly for us not to. One false move and you’re front-page news, and not for the right reasons,” he says.

Beyond COVID-19’s effect on public gatherings and sanitation, the new Toad resembles the old place. After they tore apart the old restaurant’s interior, they installed part of the old bar and its whisky bar, as well as much of the old wooden furniture, which has been given a new polish. It gleams in the happy-hour sun shining through the windows.

“We kept the DNA of the Toad, but it’s more elevated, I think,” he says. “It was a very conscious effort for us to make it still look like the Toad… without the 30 years of beer stains.”

Also repurposed was the old Cavern stage. Monk plans on holding live entertainment at the Toad again, but the economics of the pandemic continue to make that part of the business difficult, he says.

“Every band in the city has lost their gig. No venue can afford to pay them unless they charge a cover, and you can’t even have enough people to watch them,” Monk says.

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall