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Twenty-twenty started off great. January is usually the toughest month in the restaurant business, with everyone hiding from the cold and saving money after Christmas. But every table was taken at Alo, my flagship restaurant at Queen and Spadina. Same story at my two Alo spinoffs: my diner-inspired spot, Aloette, and my Yorkville steak house, Alobar. We’d just opened our fourth location, a private event space in Yorkville named Salon, and we were already booking weddings into the summer.
After five years in business, we’d matured as a company we could better predict what customers would want with each season, and we could plan. I believed both Alobar and Aloette could be replicated in new neighbourhoods, maybe even in new cities. I started to look forward to every report from Olga Novokchanova, our accountant. I was feeling so good about things that I booked a spring vacation.