Downtown London’s Plant Matter Bistro to close to public as of Sunday

After nearly three years in the core area of London, Ont., Plant Matter Bistro is closing to the public and preparing to switch to a delivery format.

Saturday’s service will be its last, according to Glenn Whitehead, who owns the Dundas Street restaurant as well as eateries on Richmond Street and Wortley Road which will remain open.

“We opened October three years ago. We opened to quite a great response and exceeded kind of all of our goals and hopes and then shortly thereafter construction broke on Dundas (Place) and we had two years of construction on both ends of Dundas,” he said.

“Those things really did have a huge impact. A massive drop in sales, a drop in foot traffic, etc. And then this year, in January, they opened up the roads and then all of a sudden we started to see some great numbers again, January, February, and then COVID happened.”

Whitehead says they were shut down for four months and reopened in the summer, but between the pandemic and his concerns about the impact of London’s homelessness crisis, he decided to close to the public.

“When things opened up, we really did see a massive increase in people sleeping on our stoop or coming and talking to customers — like three, four, five, six, seven people walking by asking for change from the customers while they had a dinner on the patio,” he said, noting that led to ‘people not feeling comfortable at night.”

“It’s a systemic issue. It’s something that needs to be thought out at a completely different level than just sweeping people off this street to that street. That’s a long term solution that isn’t in our in our wheelhouse.”

The concern is not a new one in downtown London.

In Oct. 2019, city staff released the Core Area Action Plan which aimed to revitalize the core.

Included in that plan were responses city staff gathered from interviews with people downtown. Some Londoners noted, according to the report, that theft and vandalism occur regularly, panhandlers are often aggressive and intimidating, public infrastructure is often damaged and that needles, feces, urine and garbage are often present in storefronts.

However, the report did not provide data attached to the observations provided by those interviewed.

While the bistro will close to the public, Whitehead says he will continue to use the space.

“We have the lease at the bistro. I don’t plan on walking away at this particular moment. We’re just closing service. We’re going to reformat it, open up just a delivery-focused new menu, new product list. ‘Ghost kitchens’ is what they’re calling it. A lot of restaurants are doing it in Toronto, in New York, all around right now, given the COVID situation.”

An announcement in regards to the reformatting is expected in the next few weeks.

Whitehead says they’re hoping to keep most of their staff in the switch, noting that they “had a pretty big downshift of staff anyway” due to the pandemic.

“Between the other restaurants and continuing to operate takeout and cooking at the bistro, we’re hoping to keep most of the staff.”

Data gathered in 2020 has painted a dire picture for those in the restaurant industry.

Figures released last month by Statistics Canada estimated that more than 4,600 businesses in Ontario’s accommodation and food services sector, and 11,000 across Canada, closed between February and the end of April.

Local data for that specific sector wasn’t available, but the agency estimated London saw more than 1,000 businesses spanning various economic sectors close in that same time period.

–With files from Global News’ Andrew Graham.