In all fairness to him, it is pretty respectable that he closed and paid everyone's wages fully. There's plenty of places that shut down and use that as a reason to not pay that month's wages. I don't even think he's too far off the mark with the rest of it either. Obviously delusional but he is kinda right. There's no way it could have survived and yea the licensing probably did kill it. If it was just some mid generic restaurant then it might still be open but paying for a license like that and opening in the middle of canada would never have worked. Not even the most devoted of garf girls would travel that far, it was less of a licensed/themed restaurant and more like a novelty one. Maybe if it was in la or some shit it would have worked out better. Food quality aside.
These were hourly employees making minimum wage. By law he had to pay out their checks, this isn’t some grand gesture, it was like $5k-$10k at most,
The majority of restaurants close in the first 5 years.
If you ignore theming, Garfield wars was a take out/delivery only upscale pizzeria with all organic farm sourced ingredients in Toronto, you have extremely expensive rent mixed it’s extremely expensive food costs leading to extremely expensive menu pricing for the food offerings. But the high cost did not translate to high quality, if anything it was slightly worse than average. This mix of exclusively upscale but delivery-only made Garfield eats a guaranteed failure. He also had a bad vision. It was a pizzeria, but it randomly sold french fries. It was a regular restaurant, but then it tried to also be a Starbucks competitor with the line of cappuccinos. There was no way for the customers to even gauge what they were supposed to be getting.
The you add the theme into all of it. Extremely expensive upscale organic farm to plate food that could only be take out or delivery… all tied to a container cartoon character known for eating anything regardless of quality and with extremely childish packaging. There just wasn’t an audience for it.
Here’s a good case study. Back in the 90’s, Disney attempted to have their own fast food chain called Mickey’s Kitchen.
They were attached to two Disney store locations to create a dine and shop experience and the menu was all organic and attempting to be healthy. Smoking was banned at a time when no other fast food did so, they had a meatless burger as an option, and the quality was considered higher than that of McDonald’s and co.
And they failed colossally and both test locations shut down within a year, if Disney at one of their all time company highs couldn’t succeed with much more relevant characters and a full retail store attached to it, what chance did Garfield have 30 years removed from relevancy in a random unthemed building in Toronto? Disney also tried the classier healthier food, and it didn’t work because that stuff doesn’t appeal to kids and it confuses adults.
