New Brunswick’s Real Food Connections Closing Down
FREDERICTON – Real Food Connections, a New Brunswick business specializing in local food, announced Wednesday evening that it’s closing down.
After communicating the news to investors, suppliers and staff, company owner Levi Lawrence and his family released a statement on the company’s Facebook page and website. In the statement, Lawrence cites past financial and business errors for the closure. The company had been in business for six-and-a-half years.
“Many of our financial challenges actually come from past hardships and decisions that did not develop as desired,” the statement read. “It is also very likely that right from the outset we did not source enough capital, or properly respect the amount of logistics and sheer difficulty of our proposed goals. However, I also believe that without our naivety or bootstrapped finances we would not have gotten as far as we did. I can now see where we errored on our path, but I am also confident that we made the best decisions with the information known to us and the resources we had available.”
The statement goes on to say that the company will be leaving some of its suppliers unpaid, but that stopping business now is the best solution.
“Continuing without confidence that we have a larger financial solution in the coming months would only impact our suppliers more negatively and we just cannot continue to purchase from our many local businesses if we are not confident that they will see payment in the future.”
Once the decision to close was made, the company felt there was a need to act on it quickly. In the statement, Lawrence admits the news will take many by surprise, but says they have shared many of their challenges with their various shareholders over the past few months.
Lawerence says the company doesn’t lay blame on anyone, and no government body or official can save the company from its current state. He concluded the statement by saying he hopes the community can move past this and focus on new ways to support local food.
“My hope is that we see positivity and a re-engagment with our food system and concentrate on future solutions, not spend energy on negativity about the past,” the statement reads.
“Please support your local food producers, they need it now more than ever. Real Food connections spent millions of dollars at local farms over the past years, and I fear for the coming year where that will not be so.”
You can read the full statement below:
Real Food Connections has two locations, one in Fredericton and one in Saint John. They were also set to open a cafe in the new Picaroons Roundhouse in Fredericton.