A Winnipeg woman raised funds to save her bakery after her mother's illness threatened the family business

The mother and daughter behind a long-running Winnipeg bakery are asking for help after a serious illness threatens the future of their business.

Erin Essery and her mother have been making cakes for Winnipeggers for the past 24 years at the Eiffel Tower Pastry and Catering.

Erin said her mother, Brenda, contracted COVID-19 last November and was hospitalized the following month with extremely low oxygen levels.

“I tried my best to split my time between the hospital and the bakery, but my priority was always my family. We're a family business,” Erin told the CBC.

“On December 30th they took him to the intensive care unit and finished intubating him and they told us it was time to say goodbye.”

Fortunately, Brenda slowly began to wake up from her medically induced coma over the course of several weeks in January, but Erin knew something else was wrong.

“I asked him if he wanted the TV on and he said he wasn't watching it anyway.” I thought it was because he didn't have his glasses on.'

Erin asked her mother if she could see at all, “She said no.

“They're not sure if it's a lack of oxygen flow, but both of his optic nerves are damaged, so he's completely blind,” Erin said.

“Right now he can't see, he can't move, he has a tube in his lungs.

'Heartbreaking'

Doctors aren't sure exactly what Brenda suffered from, but they say it includes respiratory trauma from post-Covid.

“Basically, they think my mom's lungs just couldn't heal after she got COVID,” Erin said.

Brenda had recently been moved out of intensive care and into a ward with less nursing supervision, making Erin even more reluctant to leave her mother's bedside.

Erin says she noticed another problem after paying her bills in late January, because their emergency fund was “basically wiped out.”

“I couldn't see a way to do it, I couldn't see a way to support my mother and keep the bakery going.”

He has started a fundraising campaign through the online fundraising website GoFundMe to keep the business going and to stay by his mother's bedside, which is currently close to $19,000 of its $20,000 goal.

Erin says she wants to support her mom through this difficult time, but doesn't want to lose the years of work they've put into the bakery and the close relationships they've built with customers along the way.

She says customers keep asking about her mother.

“It's very moving to realize that we mean so much to them,” she said.

“The thought of not only losing business, but losing our community is heartbreaking.”

The business hasn't run as smoothly as it used to because it now doesn't have two full-time employees, which means more money for staffing costs while Erin and her mother are away, he said.

Erin, who worked 12-hour shifts together to survive the early years of the pandemic, says she hopes both her mother and the bakery can pull through, but they need time to adjust.

“Inflation is squeezing everyone”

Brianna Solberg with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says about 19 per cent of Manitoba businesses are facing similar uncertainty due to the tough economy.

“It's harder to be in business now than it was at the peak of the pandemic because costs are going up,” he told the CBC.

“Businesses are finding that their customers are coming back slower and spending less on average because inflation is squeezing everyone.”

Solberg said he's not aware of any federal or provincial programs that Canadian small businesses rely on when they're in financial trouble, describing Erin and Brenda's case as an example of a disruption that “completely destroys a small business.”

Erin says there are plans to expand the Eiffel Tower pastry shop and catering in the coming months, but her mother's illness has drained them of both their finances and their emotional energy.

According to Erin, her mother's lungs are better now than they were before, but the effects of the treatment to remove them required extensive physical therapy and time to recover.

However, she is determined to stay in her mother's corner and hopes to live together in the bakery as long as possible.

“The doctors don't hold out hope that he'll get his sight back, but they said he was going to die and he beat it, so I'm going to keep hoping,” Erin said.

“If not, I'll give him as much support as he needs… We'll figure it out together because we're a team.”