Ottawa-Gatineau Restaurant News

[OTownandDown]

The exclusivity clause in itself is problematic.

As can be seen on the awful Sparks Street food truck ban, restricting adjacent vendors does not mean you'll get more customers simply because you forced the competition to go away. Quite the opposite. Encouraging an ecosystem encourages additional foot traffic. Precisely why customers regularly travel to wellington street from outside the neighbourhood, because of the variety of offerings.

If this were a street with ONLY Stella Luna on it, I'd probably not head there to have a nice evening stroll, and I'd probably not have dropped in for a quick gelato either.

Instead of stirring the pot and forcing an eviction for a vendor who could potentially move directly across the street, rendering this entire thing moot, and outwardly being a d*ck about this whole thing, considering there's a line up out the door every day for $10 scoops of ice cream, Stella Luna should have reached out to discuss how they could support eachother. (Gelato on waffles, anyone?) Stella Luna DOES sell waffles but I've never seen anyone buy one. James could have become the waffle supplier across all four of SL locations, and James could have offered SL gelato as a topping on his waffles. Instead, there's bad juju. Eventually SL's luck will run out and their delicious delicious gelato won't be enough of a draw to overcome the seemlingly tone-deafness of the owners. To loosely quote Andy from Toyota 'do good things and the customers will follow'.

Its friggin' wellington street for christssake. There are dozens of restaurants and cafes, all within walking distance. To say that having one place selling waffles in the same building will affect business is bullsh*t. Its like having one restaurant in a mall food court. Nobody's gonna go.