Déjà Vu Café and its many, many flavours of wings, tenders, and milkshakes are such a part of Moose Jaw’s food scene that its temporary closure due to lack of chicken leaves a big taste gap downtown.
“We just ran out of chicken,” said owner/operator Brandon Richardson. He had no explanation for his supplier’s shortage, but speculated it was another ripple effect from COVID-19.
The restaurant closed on May 16, and will re-open on Wednesday, June 1.
Richardson hopes nothing like this happens again and said his supplier does not anticipate further issues.
“We’ve never had a problem in 12-plus years,” he commented, “but there’s never been COVID before, either.”
Other suppliers reached out to Richardson when they heard about the shutdown, but he refused to compromise on the quality of his product.
“What’s the saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? That’s one of my business mottos. Everything the same as we’ve always done.”
He said that the chicken tenders he was being offered were only one-third the weight of his usual tenders.
“I said, I can’t use them, because I don’t know how I can sew three tenders together to make one,” Richardson laughed. “There’s not enough time in the day to sew that many pieces together. And then if I serve people tenders that are 20 grams instead of 60 … probably wouldn’t hear the end of it.”
Instead, Richardson elected to temporarily close his doors. He and his staff have had many supportive comments from the community, hoping they re-open soon and wishing them the best.
They’ve used the time to replace the flooring throughout the cafe, get some painting done, fix some minor things they’d been having trouble getting to, and give everything a deep clean.
They also went up to the lake for some yard work and fun, Richardson added.
He’s getting ready to take the paper down from the windows, the answering machine message has been changed back to regular hours and everyone is excited to get back to a normal work day.
