Considering the amount of havoc the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked on Whistler’s business community—and, not to mention, the increasingly debilitating labour shortage—it might not seem like an obvious time to open a business in the resort.
But as restrictions loosen and tourists return to the Village Stroll, that’s exactly what some new local establishments are doing.
Australian-based affordable eyewear brand Bailey Nelson opened the doors to its first Whistler storefront on July 9, four years after marking its expansion into Canada with a location on Vancouver’s Robson Street.
The timing turned out to be ideal, said Nick Perry, Bailey Nelson’s founder and managing director of North America—and not just because of skyrocketing demand for blue-light lenses after a year-and-a-half of zoom meetings.
“I think if we’d been open two years ago, it would be a vastly different situation and would have been incredibly challenging. As it applies to Whistler, we were fortunate that we sort of timed it where traffic is starting to come back, and people are out shopping and spending again,” he said.
On the surface, the timing of Mountain Chic Hair Lounge’s opening wasn’t as lucky, explained co-owner Mini Rey. But when she and business partner Geneviève Dubois opened their salon in Creekside Village at the height of Whistler’s COVID- 19 outbreak—just one day after Whistler Blackcomb was ordered to close by provincial health officials—they found an unexpected silver lining.
“There was definitely some concern,” Rey said. “We had been so excited because the [gondola] line-ups were so big last winter that they would have been right in front of the salon. But then we realized pretty quickly that we opened right next door to the liquor store and that that’s all the traffic you need—when the mountain’s closed, what else can you really do, right?”
And with their respective businesses tending to cater more toward locals than visitors, both Rey and Perry acknowledged that their establishments will likely be somewhat protected from the ebbs and flows of tourism moving forward.
“There was some nervousness about, obviously, Whistler being really reliant on international tourism to fuel the local economy, but for us, we are much more reliant on the locals,” Perry explained. “If they’re flying in from the U.S., people are not going to necessarily get a prescription eye exam and a prescription pair of glasses, whilst they’re on their one week vacation."
Mountain Chic, meanwhile, has “had such positive feedback from the community and we just feel so supported,” said Rey. “So many people are coming in from word of mouth, which is great.”
While the restaurant industry might be slightly more dependent on tourism than a hair salon or an eye-care retailer, the timing has worked out nearly as fortuitously for Joe Fortes’ soon-to-be-open Whistler location, its general manager (GM) said.
The legendary Vancouver seafood restaurant and chophouse announced in December 2019 that it planned to expand with a second location, in the Sundial Place space that housed Trattoria di Umberto for more than 30 years. Initially slated to open in mid- to late-January 2020, the eatery is finally opening its doors on Tuesday, Aug. 31.
“The timing is actually quite perfect for us to open a new restaurant, with everything opening up. If we’d finished this, I imagine, in March of last year, and had been forced to shut down and had everyone hired and trained up it would be completely different,” said GM Michael Graham, during a break from a recent orientation session for new staff in the newly renovated dining room.
“With looser restrictions, at this point, it seems like the perfect time to have people walk into a brand-new restaurant and see it as a restaurant should be, and have that comfort walking into a restaurant.”
Whistler's labour woes prove challenging
Despite those benefits, one common struggle shared by all three businesses Pique spoke with for this story is staffing.
Rey pinpointed it as “the biggest challenge” Mountain Chic has faced so far. The salon hired one stylist to work alongside its two co-owners, but has struggled to find the one-to-two more stylists it needs in order to open all seven days of the week, she said.
Though Joe Fortes Whistler has “quite a good crew of servers and bartenders” ready to welcome guests, Graham said, the restaurant is, like most of their peers, missing “the consistent stream” of foreign workers who’ve traditionally filled integral support roles like bussers and dishwashers.
Local restaurants “are all running [with] shoestring employees,” Graham said, adding, “An advantage we’ve had is that we have an extremely positive, strong and supportive upper management team.”
Amid an “incredibly challenging” labour market, Perry said Bailey Nelson was lucky to find and hire long-time locals with deep connections in the Whistler community. The company was able to lock down both a store manager and assistant store manager who were born and raised in Whistler, and an optometrist who moved to Whistler from Edmonton in March of 2020.
One opportunity the brand was looking into was the possibility of inviting some staff from its Australian locations to relocate to Whistler, but with Australia’s borders still closed, that option remains unavailable for the time being, he added.
Particularly when it comes to casual and part-time labour, “With Australia not letting anyone leave the country at the moment, I know there’s many businesses in Whistler feeling the pinch right now, so we’re not alone in that respect,” Perry said.
“Fortunately, the leadership team is incredibly capable and diligent and working really hard. We’re very lucky to have that. Otherwise, we’d be in a tight spot.”
As for Rey, she said the experience of opening a business during a pandemic has highlighted the importance of supporting local, and encouraged other potential entrepreneurs to take the plunge.
Starting a business “seems like a scary thing, especially in these times, but really once you’re in it, you realize that it’s doable ... A lot of people have been kind of taken away from their job, or their job has been taken away from them. And so if there was ever something that they wanted to do, they should just do it,” she said.
“That’s my take: Take the situation you’re in, and turn it into an opportunity.”
