A beloved and missed Bridge Street fixture is carting their skills to your backyard in 2021.
Glenn Barrington and Anne Herteis of Thunder and Lightning announced that their travelling cocktail bar will be up and running this spring and summer, for those who miss their signature drinks and chat.
On May 14th, the couple announced the closure of the T&L pub on social media, one post gathering almost 500 likes and 90 comments of support.
The pub’s location on 23 Bridge Street has since been cleared of its signature couches and taxidermy wildlife, and replaced with a vaporizer store named “The Vapour Trail.”
While Thunder and Lightning no longer has a physical presence in the community, Barrington says the spirit of the bar will be kept alive in the coming year.
Glenn Barrington and Anne Herteis made the difficult decision to close the doors of Thunder and Lightning Pub shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Canada in spring of last year.
Now, with vaccines on the horizon and more knowledge of how COVID-19 spreads, the pair are tentatively accepting bookings for events in the spring and summer.
Barrington and Herteis had a soft launch for T&L’s travelling cocktail bar on March 9th last year, just days before COVID-19 lockdown.
The cocktail bar is meant to be mobile in order to travel to and from events, such as weddings or private parties, and provide drinks and banter on the go.
GB: The concept of it is it’s a mobile bar, a traveling cocktail bar. That is something that would be like an addition to your event, instead of it being a cater-waiter at a banquet table with black dress shirts on, serving you terrible drinks. It’s like a really nice bar that you want to hang out at and lean on, like a bar in a real pub, in our real bar. It looks amazing. You kind of have to check it out to see exactly what it is. That’s it, a full bar service and cocktail catering for any event, party, gathering, you name it. We love bartending and I missed that a lot. I think that we’re also trying to give ourselves something to look forward to. [And] have hopes of things happening, as everyone is. Just like, “Oh, maybe I could bartend again.”
The travelling cocktail bar was intended to be an extension of Thunder and Lightning pub, and was funded in part by a Renaissance Sackville grant.
Barrington is optimistic about the travelling cocktail bar, in part due to the grant and low overhead.
GB: The town has given us this cool opportunity to have this business that doesn’t have any overhead and doesn’t have a huge investment on our part. [So] if it doesn’t happen for a while we’re not stressed about the cost put into it and getting our money back from it. So it put us in this nice position where we’re just waiting for everybody else, for things to start to go back to normal. But I guess the intention was that the people planning things, events like that usually with six months to a year’s notice, that now would probably be a good time to just say, “Hey, we’re still here.” We still want to do this whenever we can. We’re here to work with everyone [and] anyone that’s interested to kind of figure out the best way to navigate each individual situation, considering how much things change all the time right now
Part of the reason why Thunder and Lightning closed in May of 2020 was due to financial strain, Barrington says.
Like many small businesses, Barrington and Herteis have debt accumulated from operating the business.
He says there is no way they could have managed the loss of business due to COVID-19 on top of debt accumulation.
Sackville’s small businesses, he says, are likely struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic.
GB: It’s really hard for small businesses in the town of this size to make a go. Anybody that’s still open right now and that has been open throughout the pandemic… I can only imagine it’s been incredibly challenging. Asking local businesses how they’re doing… If they say that they’re doing all right, I would assume that that’s a response to their own personal mental health and self and not necessarily the business is doing all right. Because I don’t think anyone’s doing very well right now. But as far as reopening a bar and Sackville, in a perfect world, sure. But right now, I just don’t know what that looks like.
Those who miss the chatter and spirits of T&L can get in touch with Thunder and Lightning’s travelling cocktail bar by email at bookingsthunderandlightning@gmail.com.
