A new French bakery is ready to open in downtown Thorold—but dessert won't be served until the city approves all the necessary permits.
JC Patissier on Front Street has been waiting to open its doors since November, but the owners say they've been forced to stay closed because the city has been slow to provide the necessary business permits.
“Our target was to open for Christmas, at least at the beginning of December, so we could grab all that business and people got to know us,” says Juan Asenjo, who owns the bakery together with his wife Zahra Anzza.
In an interview with ThoroldToday, the couple says the city keeps erecting obstacles that prevent them from opening. The issues raised by the city range from requiring certification of a gas line that was already there, to asking the couple to hire a mechanical engineer to draw up plans on renovations that have already been completed.
“We’re spending more in drawings than we spent in renovations,” says Asenjo.
“It’s like you ask me to make you a cake,” adds Anzza. “And the people ate the cake, the cake is done already but they keep on asking, ‘So that cake you did, did it have this?’ But the cake is done, that’s it.”
The couple doesn’t understand why the city is being so difficult, especially since most of the renovations performed have been cosmetic.
“We changed a few pipes from rotten to PVC lines and that’s it,” says Asenjo. “The rest is all make-up, we changed the tiles just to make it clean, we installed cameras, we changed the doors, stuff like that.”
The couple keeps getting bounced around, from one city department to another, leaving them in the dark about the state of their application.
“To be honest, I don’t know what else they want,” says Asenjo. “There’s no good communication. It’s very unclear. I don’t want to ask more questions to delay those emails. We go with the flow.”
The city’s lack of communication risks creating additional delays in opening the bakery, says the couple, because they need at least two weeks of preparation before they can open.
“We have to do a nice mise-en-place,” says Anzza. “You can not just [say] you can open, and you open tomorrow. We need to be more prepared.”
For now, all they can do is wait.
“Our life used to be work-work-work,” says Anzza. “There’s only so much you can do in the house, you start feeling bored. We need to work and we need the money.”
