🚀 And so it begins...

With it looking increasingly likely that The Dream Cafe will be resurrected, I thought some people might be interested in how this came to be. And if not, well, suffice it to say that I’d like to record it lest I forget what happened. (I am 60, after all.) Quite a bit has transpired already, so this initial post will be a bit lengthy. Going forward, I’ll try to keep them shorter.

My involvement with The Dream Cafe begins with me buying a home in Penticton in 2022 and quickly discovering just how amazing it was. Not long afterward, I met its General Manager, Kevin Rose and, eventually, I learned the cafe was struggling financially. I regularly offered to help, but nothing ever came of it.

When I saw Kevin looking particularly exhausted at a show in July 2025, I once again offered to help. This time, he provided an email introduction to Lori Keith, the Chair of the board of The Dream Cafe. That was July 11, 2025. Unfortunately, Lori was busy with work, travel, and—like most of us in Penticton—hosting summer visitors. We weren’t able to meet until August 26.

When Lori and I finally sat down, we discussed the state of The Dream Cafe, and I shared a few ideas for turning it around. Lori was receptive and open in answering my many questions. What she didn’t tell me—or perhaps didn’t yet know—was that The Dream Cafe was about to shut its doors. Just a few days later, on August 29, I learned via Facebook that the cafe would be closing at the end of the JJ Shiplett show on September 6, 2025.

In the days that followed, I had several more meetings with Lori, Kevin, and other board members. These eventually led to an introduction to Prema Harris. Prema and her husband, Ron, own the building in which The Dream Cafe is located. I felt there was no point continuing unless the building was available.

Fortunately, Prema and Ron are passionate supporters of the arts (with two very artistic daughters). When The Dream’s closure was announced, they immediately had people wanting to buy the building. But as I quickly learned, so long as there was a way to save The Dream Cafe, they weren’t interested in selling.

At our meeting, I shared my still somewhat foggy vision for the next iteration of The Dream Cafe—why I thought it would succeed this time and what I saw as the next steps. Prema listened attentively, asked good questions, and told me about others who were interested in helping (or buying the building).

One of the names she mentioned was Aaron McRann. It was unfamiliar to me at the time, but Aaron is the CEO of our local Community Foundation. Shortly afterward, Prema arranged for Aaron to host a meeting in his boardroom with some of the people she had mentioned. I explained again how I thought The Dream Cafe could succeed and, during the discussion that followed, it became clear—at least to me—that support for the plan was growing.

That meeting was on a Friday afternoon. On Saturday morning, I woke up and began refining the business model. By noon, I had a clearer vision of how things might work, so I started creating a website to make it all happen. I coded almost non-stop throughout the weekend and, along the way, requested another meeting with Aaron. We got together on Monday afternoon (September 22). By then, both the vision and the website were far enough along for Aaron to see that the resurrection of The Dream Cafe was possible.

With Aaron fully on board, the project quickly gained momentum. Whereas before it felt like I was pushing things forward, I now felt like I was struggling to keep up. Aaron wanted to arrange a meeting with potential donors and members as soon as possible, but at that point the website was little more than a proof of concept. So, in the days that followed, when I wasn’t in meetings with other stakeholders, I had my head down coding much of what powers the site today.

Among the many stakeholders I met during this time were the directors of the existing Dream Cafe. They’ve all given tirelessly (and in some cases financially) to the cafe over the years. As they were discovering, it’s often more work—and more stressful—to shut down a business than to run it. So I made a commitment to them that I, along with the new Dream Society, would do whatever we could to help them navigate the aftermath of the closing. I’ll share more about this in the weeks and months ahead.

So where are we now? Just over a month after it was announced that The Dream Cafe would close, I’m pleased to report that I’m now preparing to present the vision and website for The Dream Society to a small gathering of community-minded people at the cafe. If they share our enthusiasm and pledge their support, then I think we’ll be able to say the resurrection is officially underway.

Wish me luck! 🤞🏻