T H E L E M O N A D E Downtown businesses find new recipes for success during the pandemic MASTERS
M arcel Rosehart will never forget Friday, March 13, 2020. It wasn’t just an unlucky day; it was a nightmare. “We lost five weeks of bookings in the span of a few hours,” the co-owner of Chrissy’s Catering recalls. “By the end of that one day, we had lost every single wedding, anniversary and business event we had scheduled.” Two days earlier on March 11, the World Health Organization had declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. That same day Ontario logged its first COVID-19 related death—a man in his 70s from Barrie, Ontario. The following day, another death was reported—a man in his 50s from Milton. “People were scared,” says Marcel. “We’d all seen how COVID-19 had crippled China and other countries and now suddenly it was spreading in Ontario.” When Premier Doug Ford announced a state of emergency,
and later closed all non-essential businesses in the province, the situation went from bad to worse. “I remember pulling my full time staff together and saying, ‘Listen, I know we’re a catering company but we’re going to have do something different if we’re going to survive this,” he says. (Below) Marcel Rosehart, co-owner of Chrissy's Catering stands on the patio of the Carriage Hall (25 Brock Street West)
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