What Happened to Full Circle Cafe After Restaurant Makeover? (Toronto, ON)

Full Circle Cafe was the eighth episode of Restaurant Makeover's first season, aired 2005-05-24 according to the Google Play, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb listings. Google Play's description says the cafe had been abandoned inside a building converted to low-income housing, and that it had to be revived with no renovation budget so it could serve as a training center. Rotten Tomatoes says the team tried to turn the cafe into a successful business. RealityTVWorld's show page credits chef Brad Long and designer Meredith Heron.

That setup differs from the show's usual format. According to RealityTVWorld and Wikipedia's article on the series, owners normally had their funds matched up to $20,000 (later $15,000) to pay for a very limited makeover. The Google Play description of a revival without a budget is the only money detail we found for this episode. We found no description of the menu, the decor, the staff or the training program the team set up, no mention of a name change, and no coverage of the relaunch.

No listing we read gives a location for the cafe. RealityTVWorld's table leaves the location blank, and Google Play's description mentions only a building converted to low-income housing. Searches for the cafe's name returned show lists and unrelated businesses with similar names, none of which we could connect to the episode.

What happened to the cafe or its training program after the episode is not documented in anything we found. This entry records only what the episode listings say and leaves the cafe's location and situation open until a readable, dated source is found.

City of Toronto business licence records list Full Circle Internet Cafe & Playhouse, operated by Full Circle Community Development Corp at 138 Pears Avenue, as an eating establishment licensed from 2005-03-02, shortly before the episode aired, until the licence was cancelled on 2009-06-02. The same records show no later food business licensed at that address. The community development operator fits the episode's description of a cafe run with a housing provider, though no source read names the show.