Winnipeg restaurant closing its doors after decades

The Oakwood Café in South Osborne is closing after more than 30 years. Joseph Bernacki has more.

A South Osborne institution will soon close its doors on more than three decades of service.

Kendra Menard is entering her 24th year as a server with The Oakwood Café, where she has welcomed thousands of hungry diners over the decades.

“It’s been great, it’s my whole life,” Menard said on Thursday in between bringing out plates of food.

“I’ve really enjoyed all my time here and all the people that have worked here and that have come here.”

Menard told CTV News Winnipeg she started working at the restaurant in 2002.

The Oakwood Café recently announced on social media that they will close the neighborhood restaurant on March 8, citing falling revenue and rising costs as primary reasons for their closure.

On Thursday, the afternoon lunch crowd made their way in to order the café’s signature dishes like chicken chorizo waffles.

Menard said it’s the relationships she made with regular customers and other staff that kept her happily working there.

“It’s the people,” she said. “The people are what makes it special hands down. Our customers, our regulars, even people that come here just for the first time, that find us, love us so much.”

“It’s been really hard because people have come in just to talk,” she said.

“Not even just to dine, but just to talk to me, to give me a hug, to tell me how much the Oakwood has actually affected their lives.”

Oakwood Café owner Wendy May took over the restaurant in 2016. May said she had serious thoughts about closing the neighbourhood eatery last year, noticing discretionary spending starting to dip and people watching their budget.

“It takes a toll on the numbers; any sort of reserve we had started to dwindle away and now they’re pretty much gone.” May said.

“When things change, that puts even more pressure on your bottom line. It’s not even about making a profit a lot of times; it’s about breaking even and not losing money. It’s a very fine balance.”

Rising food costs to blame

The owner said fluctuating grocery costs since the pandemic have made it impossible to effectively budget. May said simple ingredients like green onion have fluctuated between $12 to $20 for a two-pound bag.

“A few weeks ago, they were $36 a bag,” she said.

“No one’s going to pay $20 for bacon and eggs.”

In the back of the kitchen, prep cook Rob Armstrong peels dozens of potatoes ahead of the next rush of orders. Armstrong said he has been a friend of May for more than three decades.

“The thing that I’m going to miss the most is the camaraderie of working here,” Armstrong said.

“Everybody here has been here for years. It’s so much more personal at a mom-and-pop operation.”

Armstrong said he’s worked at The Oakwood Café off and on for three and a half years. He said mom-and-pop operations feel financial pressure the most when nearly every menu item is made from scratch.

“We’re not going to make any money because the overhead and the cost are all going up and we can’t possibly charge $25 for a sandwich; that’s crazy,” Armstrong said.

“With that said, Wendy decided to cut her losses and move on.”

It’s not just restaurants closing their doors that are feeling the pinch with the rise in food costs.

At Silver Heights Restaurant, owner Tony Siwicki writes down another reservation from customers waiting to enjoy their barbecue ribs that have made them a well-known St. James eatery.

Siwicki said he sympathizes with customers noticing their costs have gone up.

“At my restaurant, my ribs that I have bought from six years ago till today have gone up from $17 a pound to $30 a pound,” he said.

“Never mind veal cutlets; oil has (gone) from $22 to $60. French fries have doubled. Dairy, butter, you name it. Everything I buy has increased significantly.”

Siwicki said it’s been a balancing act managing rising input costs and the charge they then have to place on their regular diners.

“Every time the prices go up, we have to sit there and say, ‘How much can we push on to the customer before we scare those customers away?’” he said.

Siwicki is currently on the board with the Manitoba Restaurant and Foodservices Association.

In a statement to CTV News Winnipeg, the association said there is a real concern for the survival of independent family-run restaurants following a Dalhousie University Agri-Food Analytics Lab report in January.

The report found that 7,000 independent restaurants closed in 2025 and another 4,000 could close this year.

“These are not chain restaurants; these are locally owned operations that we are losing just like the Oakwood,” said Shaun Jeffrey, executive director of the Manitoba Restaurant and Foodservices Association, in the statement.

Back at the Oakwood Café, May said it’s difficult to say goodbye to staff like Menard who have worked there for years. She said the same dishwasher has worked at the restaurant since 1993.

May is hopeful the space will develop into another neighbourhood establishment.

“It’s been an amazing ride,” May said.

“I hope someone comes and gives it the TLC that the Oakwood has been able to do and the same thing can be a little nugget in this community, which is fantastic. I can’t extol the virtues of South Osborne enough.”