Community trying to keep longtime Lake Country cafe open

A beloved Lake Country cafe announced it was planning to close earlier this week due to rising costs and a lack of business, but some members of the community are coming together in hopes of keeping it open.

The Wooden Nickel Cafe has been a fixture in a strip mall along Highway 97 in Lake Country. New owners Cheryl and Travis Forster announced on social media, April 8, it would be closing its doors in the coming days.

"Rising costs have been a major factor," Cheryl said. "When I bought the restaurant, I basically got enough of a loan to cover the buying of the restaurant and the inventory and didn't leave any working capital. We had some equipment failures, I got scammed by someone who pretended to be BC Hydro and then the wildfires.

"It's kind of been a rolling ball of bad luck which started to add up and add up."

She kept thinking it would get busier so they could cover their costs but finally ended up in a situation where they couldn't pay their bills.

Cheryl and Travis bought the cafe from its previous owner in June of 2023, and while they weren't impacted directly by the COVID pandemic they still suffered other consequences.

"The pandemic has been a factor because the previous owner was only open Monday to Friday during the pandemic because of staffing issues and then when we bought the place we decided to open on Sundays because that used to be the busiest day, but we lost clientele since the pandemic and nothing's been enough unfortunately," Cheryl says.

While she doesn't want to create false hope, she says some members community have come together in hopes of keeping the restaurant open. 

"We have a lot of people reach out in different ways and giving us ideas to see what we can do so that maybe we won't have to close completely," she says. 

An online fundraiser has also been created.

For now, she says there's no official closing date.

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