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‘We’ve done it before’: original owners reopen Stratford Boston Pizza

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The shuttered Stratford Boston Pizza reopened Wednesday under the same ownership that originally brought the restaurant to the city more than a decade ago.

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Don McDougall and daughter Anne McDougall, who built the Erie Street restaurant about 12 years ago and were the original co-franchisees for the first decade, have resumed their previous roles.

“In fairness to her, she’s the one that does the work,” the elder McDougall said Wednesday with a chuckle. “It’s more her than me.”

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The father and daughter were the landlords of the building through the Stratford company Rambri Management. McDougall is the founder and CEO while his daughter the president. McDougall said they “were surprised like everybody else” when the store and three other locations run by Brian Haase – two in Kitchener and one in Waterloo – abruptly closed on Jan. 24.

McDougall said as landlords they were in a good position to get the restaurant back up and running quickly.

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“So we decided that’s what we should do. We don’t have to learn something new. We’ve done it before,” he said.

Boston Pizza International Inc. officials said they wanted the Stratford store to open again under new ownership as soon as possible.

“Don and Anne immediately stepped up to the challenge and worked closely with us to bring Boston Pizza back to Stratford,” Felix Decata, the chain’s vice-president of national and business development, said in a statement.

The McDougalls sold the business to Haase about two years ago. He had between 40 and 45 employees at the Stratford restaurant before closing and most of them, including two longtime managers, will still be working there.

“We have two really seasoned in-store management people,” said McDougall, a former Labatt Brewing Company and Toronto Blue Jays executive who was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002 for his role in bringing Major League Baseball to Toronto.

The managers will be hiring a few more staff, he said.

Despite the brief closure, McDougall said the business was profitable over the lpst couple of years.

“It’s been doing very well. It was not one of his problem childs,” he said.

tbridge@postmedia.com

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