Big Heart Social, the café-bar at 55 School Street in Vergennes, closed its doors on Sunday, September 27, after a brief but sparkly run.
For exactly three months, Big Heart Social established itself as a home for Addison County’s queer community — hosting events such as movie nights, fundraisers, and burlesque and drag shows — where everyone was welcome.
But sales didn’t cover the business’ expenses, cofounder Shiloh Lawrence told Seven Days.
Lawrence financed Big Heart Social from her personal savings. “As a trans person, I felt strongly about not taking out federal small business loans due to challenges with the current administration,” she explained.
Renovating the former Hired Hand Brewing taproom and building a new upstairs kitchen entailed unexpected costs that doubled, then tripled, the project’s initial budget. “That was the end of the cash flow that should have covered our first year,” Lawrence said.
She adjusted Big Heart’s all-day hours, changed the café’s staffing model and booked “a ton of events,” she said, “but we were really far from where we needed to be.”
Lawrence said that when she told staff about Big Heart’s closure, they informed her they had been working to form a union. She worked with staff who had signed the union petition to acknowledge their efforts in a statement shared on social media and hung in the bar.
For now, the future of both the business and the space is up in the air. Lawrence said she’s focusing on her web application development business while considering options for the remainder of her one-year lease, such as maintaining a coworking and event space or subleasing the turnkey café to another business.
“It was really my dream to create a space like this,” Lawrence said. “And while I wasn’t able to make it sustainable, I’m really proud of what we created and achieved.”
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