Rebuilding Trailer Happiness after the Flood

Hello,

My Name is Sly

and I'm the owner of a bar called Trailer Happiness in West London. It hasn't been great business for most people involved in hospitality but after 15 months of navigating a number of Covid shaped obstacles, my team were looking forward to finally returning to something close to normality.

With everyone finally off furlough, and with additional members joining the TH team, we were ready and just one week away from what we anticipated would be a pretty great summer of Happiness. We used the first lockdown to refurbish the bar and bathrooms ourselves, for the second lockdown we tackled the kitchen. This was going to be the first time we got to see our scrubbed up bar functioning in all it's glory.

Then Monday happened.

Portobello Road was hit with flash floods, and poor drainage plus burst pipes turned into that rain into a river. Being at the bottom of the hill we took a pretty big hit. We've had to deal with water before but it's never come in through the ceiling. Thankfully nobody was seriously injured and the water subsided relatively quickly. Unfortunately the damage is significant, the water was also dirty so much of the bar will need to be stripped out or professionally sanitised before it is rebuilt.

In the meantime we are hoping to keep our team together and find a new temporary home for the next few months, we expect a few hurdles with licensing and will definitely need to consult a sound insulation specialist if we are going to stay local. We don't anticipate insurance covering loss of earnings based on what we expected to make post restrictions, and we can't control the timeframe for rebuilding so we're looking at ways to ensure we can still move the business forward and cover all of our loans. We also want to make sure Trailer has additional measures in place to help mitigate any future water issues.

This sucks but we will be back, hopefully better than ever. We are incredibly grateful for all your support and hope we can offer you Trailer hospitality again real soon. Watch this space, we'll be popping up wherever and whenever we can.

Thank You,

Sly Augustin