A Bacchus Caribbean Story
Bacchus Roti Shop has been Toronto’s Caribbean destination for over 32 years, providing an experience like no other. With our warm personalities, a casual Caribbean environment, traditional cooking style, and high-quality ingredients, we have been able to deliver exotic food and flavors that our guests are happy to eat and share with their friends and family.
Being a Caribbean family business that loves Canada and the local neighborhoods we continue to deliver good food that is accessible to everyone. We also are in continual search for ingredients that are top of the line from local suppliers, new innovative ways to deliver our products, initiatives that can reduce our environmental footprint, and more ways that we can continue being an active member of the local communities we reside in.
Caribbean immigrants to the country, Dick Bacchus’s mom started a tiny Roti Shop in Toronto’s Parkdale Village in 1985 which had no seats. This was only accomplished by Dick, his mom and his dad worked separate jobs to raise enough money to both qualify for a loan and to purchase the needed equipment and still afford to pay rent. This was a very difficult feat to accomplish by immigrants in the 80’s. However, her goal was to bring Caribbean food and experiences to the Greater Toronto Area. This involved working with local grocers to deliver high-quality ingredients that she could use to infuse together to bring the great people of Toronto the exotic flavors and spices that many of their taste buds had been missing out on. With her grit and previous background in owning a successful restaurant in Guyana, she was able to create a thriving business that became too big for their tiny location. So they up and moved their business to another location in Parkdale Village, Toronto where they too became really busy and wanted to offer their customers a higher quality of service with a better atmosphere. So they once again moved their business for a third time to their current location on 1376 Queen Street West. Unfortunately, soon after, Dick’s mom died and father fell ill, leaving a young 22 year old to have not only a lot of responsibility but between two choices, to continue attending the most prestigious school in the world being the University of Toronto, or follow in the footsteps of his mother. He chose the later.
Dick Bacchus realized the challenges he would face so he worked on building a great team, self-educated himself through books and strived to achieve the best Caribbean food and services that he could. His goal was to provide a local Caribbean experience. Shortly after taking the responsibility of the restaurant, he later lost his father.
Overcoming all of his hurdles and maintaining his obligation to provide for his family, Dick Bacchus gave back to the Parkdale Community. He volunteered for the Parkdale Village Business Improvement Area which worked to grow the local community, he donated to various causes that helped people, and he also donated to local schools to help the children prosper. He has also changed the way he provided his products when customers were seeking change. To this day, he continues to give back to the Parkdale Village community as a thank you for being a great neighborhood and family.
Today, Bacchus Roti Shop has had the opportunity to see their customers grow up from the children into young adults and the parents into grandparents, building great relationships along the way; a true gift. However, Bacchus Roti Shop has experienced some unfortunate turbulence with the increased competition, the change in the local demographic, and the major impact the 2007/2008 economic crisis has had on the local economy which Bacchus Roti Shop relied on to remain in business. However, like all things, we must change to grow and follow the trends of not only the local economy but the global one as well.
Our customers from all ages have full heartedly told us that they do not want to see Bacchus Roti Shop close down and we listened. But we will not remain small. We will look for opportunities to grow, provide better products and services at competitive prices, and become the largest Caribbean restaurant throughout North America. But we need your help to do so.
Anytime you visit, please consider sharing your ideas of things you would like to see us do. We may just implement it and have you experience it first to get your thoughts. Also, we can’t achieve our vision of growth by ourselves, if you are interested in growing with an established brand and continually learning with us along the way we would love to work with you.
Vision
To become the largest and most visited Caribbean restaurant across all of North America.
Mission
We are committed to providing Caribbean vacation enthusiasts with great Caribbean food, relaxing environment, and good vibes in the Greater Toronto Area. At Bacchus Roti Shop, our personable staff treats guests like family helping them decide what to purchase from our extensive customizable menu which provides superior value increasing our desirability and profitability. With our progressive digital presence, we are connecting with vacation enthusiasts bringing in new and repeat guests to our Toronto Caribbean destination while being a good community and environmental citizen. The continual growth of Bacchus Roti Shop relies on our energetic employees who are regularly trained, have the opportunity for growth, and can work either full time or part-time positions.
Values
Here at Bacchus Roti Shop, there is 8 values core to our business philosophy. These 8 values are honesty, integrity, dedication, conviction, energy, happiness, prosperity, and growth.
Objectives and Goals
- To increase brand awareness among Caribbean vacation enthusiasts
- To increase the number of new customers walking through our doors
- To increase the number of repeat visits of our customers in any given month
- To increase the profitability of our current location
- To develop a new restaurant location
- To work with a delivery company that services the GTA or to provide the service in-house
- To hire more locals near our restaurants for various positions who are willing to grow and build a Caribbean empire
- To give back to the local community wherever our restaurants are positioned