After just four years in business, Peterborough’s KitCoffee has overcome more obstacles than many small businesses face in a lifetime. But despite its history of challenges, not only is the café now thriving, but owner Helen McCarthy has now opened a thrift store called Kit’s Emporium.
With a lifelong love of food and baked goods, the Vancouver-born McCarthy opened KitCoffee in the heart of downtown Peterborough in July 2019. Serving up Stereo Coffee Roasters and a rotating selection of baked goods, the café is best known for its delicious croissants baked fresh in-house every day.
Though KitCoffee is running smoothly now, the hardships began soon after McCarthy opened her business.
Following the initial success of the café, McCarthy was just weeks away from opening a second location in the Alexander Medical Building in January 2020 when she slipped on ice while dropping her young daughter off at daycare. She broke her ankle and chose to recover from the resulting surgery with her family on the west coast.
She returned to Ontario in March 2020, right before pandemic restrictions hit and left KitCoffee closed until May of that year, when it re-opened to serve take-out only.
“I was lucky in the sense that my overhead for my business was, at the time, a lot smaller than a lot of other businesses,” McCarthy explains about those first few months of the lockdown. “My landlord was very generous and very understanding, which a lot of businesses didn’t have. So he was very happy to apply for the rent relief program for us and, on months we were locked down, he didn’t require me to pay full rent.”
McCarthy decided to close KitCoffee’s second location in August 2020 when many of the offices in the medical building, which she originally anticipated would be a source of walk-in traffic for the café, started getting rented out by the hospital to meet the demands of COVID-19.
“Closing it ended up being a blessing in disguise, because we got to really focus on the main location and work more on fixing things there,” she says.
Around the same time, and not long after recovering from her broken ankle, McCarthy was visiting a friend’s cottage when she jumped off a dock into water that was not as deep as she believed.
This time, McCarthy broke both her ankles. She now had to go through the healing process all over again, while still trying to juggle the unpredictability of pandemic restrictions.
“I was so lucky with the people I had working for me,” McCarthy recalls. “They really carried the café for basically the first two years, really. All those things were really unlucky, but I was really lucky to have an amazing team supporting the business during that time.”
Since McCarthy felt it important to carry only local goods, the next obstacle came towards the end of 2021 when the supply chain became increasingly inconsistent and unreliable. Since she refused to serve mass-produced pastries and croissants, she started making them in-house.
“For a while, leaning into the demand for croissants really saved us,” McCarthy says. “There weren’t really other businesses doing that.”
Then, with another lockdown in January 2022 and the derecho storm just four months later in May 2022 causing significant inventory loss and a week-long closure, the infrequently short periods of operation without interruption were too overwhelming for McCarthy.
“The storm put me over the edge, and I really started to struggle with my own mental health and with running the shop. Everything kind of started to spiral downwards that May.”
McCarthy explains she was often unable to show up for work, often causing KitCoffee to remain closed unexpectedly.
“I was very close to giving up. I was really close to just saying ‘OK, we tried (but) it’s not going to happen.'”
But the fear of losing what she had worked so hard to build, as well as the immense show of support she received, kept her going. During her very low point after the derecho storm, McCarthy posted a very vulnerable caption to an image on the business’s Instagram page, explaining that she was unsure of the café’s future.
“I got just the most wonderful messages from people saying how much they loved the spot and how important the cafe has been to them,” says McCarthy. “In general, people in Peterborough have a very loyal following for downtown businesses and for small businesses.”
She first saw this support when a friend began a GoFundMe page to keep KitCoffee running in McCarthy’s absence after she broke her ankle the first time. The campaign raised $15,000. Again, after the storm closed the café for a week, another GoFundMe campaign raised an additional $7,000.
McCarthy explains that even competing business owners expressed support of KitCoffee’s struggles, and many reached out to tell her their own experiences being on the brink of closure or even bankruptcy.
She recognizes she’s been very “privileged” in not having required a loan when she first opened KitCoffee, and that she was able to take out a second mortgage when times were tough.
“I definitely have worked hard, but I feel like I really just had help and luck too,” she explains. “I think with all the bad things that happened and the seemingly unfortunate things, my ability to access certain funds or credit has been able to solve cash flow issues that other businesses just might not have had access to.”
After recovering from three years of hardships, McCarthy says it’s unfortunate that owners feel such shame when their businesses are not doing well. Her best advice to struggling business owners is not to feel bad if it’s difficult or if it doesn’t work out.
“You might feel like you’re alone in it and everyone else is fine,” she says. “But really, other people have been through this before and made it through. A lot of businesses owners feel really ashamed about it, but I think it happens to so many people and we shouldn’t feel ashamed about it because that’s what running the business is like right now.”
Though KitCoffee is “not completely out of the woods,” McCarthy says there’s been a lot of growth since they’ve been able to remain open more consistently and have hired more staff.
Now she’s taken on a new project with the help of her partner Zack Cruise. Together, they’ve rented a space adjoining KitCoffee where they’ve opened a thrift store called Kit’s Emporium.
The storefront for Kit’s Emporium is located on George Street (in the former location of Dodrio Bubble Tea, Anime Café & Game Lounge) just around the corner from KitCoffee’s Hunter Street location, but the two spaces are connected on the inside.
Alongside clothing, Kit’s Emporium provides other second-hand offerings including décor, furniture, books, and more. The space also offers a seating section for patrons of the café.
“We want to focus on having it be a really accessible space,” McCarthy explains, adding that a major focus will be put on providing extended size and gender-neutral clothing. “Providing an affordable thrifting experience is really important to us.”
Located at 404 George Street North, Kit’s Emporium is already open for business from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Sundays but will be hosting an official grand opening on Saturday, July 15th. They are accepting donations of gently used items of all varieties (except beds or large furniture items).
For more information and updates, visit them on Instagram @kitsemporium.
KitCoffee is open seven days a week at 144 Hunter Street West in downtown Peterborough. For more information and to view the menu, visit www.kitcoffee.ca. You can also follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
