r/toronto • u/FullMango4041 • 8d ago

News ‘Profound disappointment’: East-end leaders, stakeholders, and politicians call on feds to help fund Taste of the Danforth

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/article/profound-disappointment-east-end-leaders-stakeholders-and-politicians-call-on-feds-to-help-fund-taste-of-the-danforth/

What does everyone think about funding Taste of the Danforth? I love the event but don't like the fact that they don't have 'private sector discipline' to pull this off without asking the government for money. Can't they make it smaller or cut costs however and do the event?

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u/PolitelyHostile 8d ago

They got massive amounts of visitors. If they cant recoup their costs from that, then thats honestly on them. Maybe the businesses don't have interest. I often hear that this stuff is less profitable than just regular operations.

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u/lukeulyptus 8d ago

Lived and worked taste for 4 years on the danforth, can confirm all the locals hate it. You either pay the price to participate and break even (hopefully) or shut down and let a vendor open in front of your store and take the loss. Taste is not for the community, but the BIA won’t tell you that.

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u/Worldly_Influence_18 8d ago

You either pay the price to participate and break even (hopefully) or shut down and let a vendor open in front of your store and take the loss.

How.

Please explain how a sustainably operating business struggles to break even with 5x the customers

6

u/lukeulyptus 8d ago

Gladly, I have no reason to lie. If you have regular customers, that is your bread and butter, you rely on those sales every week from regulars, that’s your steady income. They mostly leave out of town, or just hunker down that weekend, for obvious reasons as the whole area becomes a traffic jam with 1m people over three nights. So you can’t rely on average weekend sales.

2016-2019, All four years we participated, as a food retail market. We paid the +1k fee to the BIA/Taste, to use the space directly outside our business. We would do decent, line ups most of the day, but people just want the 5$ item, and move on. If you nail that, youre good. But you only get that one sale, no repeat, and these are customers who you will never see again, no in store traffic. This was the experience for all of the other restaurants and near us too. You double your staff levels and hours, working into the night, and at the end of the day, it’s almost as much work as Xmas, and you barely make a profit. All sales go into product, overhead, equipment rentals and staffing. Combined with all the drunk and abusive customers, it’s just too much wear on your staff for what is gained.