By William Crooks
Local Journalism Initiative
Brad’s Gourmet, a pizza restaurant in Lennoxville, is closing its doors. The Record sat down with owner and operator Brad Laurie and talked about his past, present, and future.
“We started this to sell our pizza dough mixes,” Laurie began, referring to the primary reason he opened his restaurant. “People really like our pizzas.” We have our regular support from the community, but it is not enough, he explained.
For the next month and a half, he will be busy closing things down and selling things off to “make way for the next chapter”.
Brad’s Gourmet opened at the end of March in 2021. “It takes a lot of people to make a local business function.” Laurie’s daughter, who helped run the business, became pregnant recently. She had to leave, putting everything on Laurie’s shoulders, he said. He found it very difficult to run his business by himself. Hiring staff is a challenge for a small company, he added.
Laurie and family moved to Lennoxville in 2014, he goes to the “church across the street” and has made friends in the area. “We consider this our community.”
Lennoxville does not offer many storefronts, he continued. His location has no parking, and the city wouldn’t allow him to have a prominent sign, due to its bylaws. He thinks this made them a bit “hidden”. At first, they only sold dough, but after six months they began making pizza in-house. Two years later Laurie would run into people who still did not know his restaurant made pizza.
