wtf? Sabletine moving to the sububrs

[danbrotherston]

So the suburbs can't have access to good food?

They have done incredibly well in their new location.  They have been adopted by the neighbourhood and attracted a whole new clientele.  We discovered Sabletine about 15 years ago in their old location when it was only half the size (ie only the lower bakery space when the vintage store was in the other half).  The new location offered about four to six times the prep space (not to mention air conditioning) and probably double the display space for their goods.  It pairs nicely with the Fromagerie a few doors down.  I am glad that they did not try to maintain two locations and I doubt that they could have found a large enough space along the LRT spine for their needs.  It took Vincenzo's nearly 50 years before they were strong enough to stock and maintain their large space in the Bauer Lofts.

Given that Sabletine's last day at their old location was around early March 2020, and their scheduled first day of business was somewhere around April 2020, it's remarkable that they were able to keep going and open more or less on time. 

This plaza had been slated for demolition and inclusion in the Hygate project next door.  From what I heard, Hygate needed the money and sold off the property.  It was so close to demolition, when Sabletine needed to hook up their phone line, all of the telephone infrastructure had been removed from the building so a new line had to be run from the closest community distribution point.

Nobody here thinks the suburbs shouldn’t have good access to food, in fact our suburbs generally do. The problem is that suburbs generally don’t support local businesses very well. The location that sabletines has moved to is not a location that is walkable for many people, and is not pleasantly walkable for anyone. This means that everyone who goes there will be in a car. Since they are in a car they can easily reach a larger full service store, anyone of our superstores for example. As a result it is extremely difficult for small local businesses to compete because they will always be more expensive. They must have an extremely strong brand presence to attract people  to make an additional trip to those small stores.

Small businesses do much better in walkable areas. But you will not find anyone here who doesn’t support making the suburbs more walkable.