Popular cafe The Frothy Bike Company is to close this Sunday after five years with the loss of five jobs.
But the Whitesands based business will continue to operate the bicycle repair shop until smaller premises are found.
Devastated owner Ross Anderson, 34, said: “We close on Sunday, April 7 and it is going to be a very emotional time for me and the staff.
“The cafe has never been as good, financially, after the Covid pandemic.
“I tried telling myself it’s just a bad month and it would get better then it would get better in the summer and then it was just a bad winter.
“I ended up getting a job off shore working with underwater robotics, but not in the mini subs, and it meant I’ve been subsidising the cafe.
“However, that meant a month to a month and a half away at a time and it was getting too much for my family.
“I would be working away and after that sacrifice I was still coming into the cafe to work and not getting the reward of being home with the wife and kids.”
Mr Anderson told how the crunch came when his accountant pointed out that the money he was pouring in personally would never be recouped for a decade.
He said: “The accountant said I was never going to see that money back for 10 years at the rate its going.
“So I was six months away from family and friends just to subsidise the cafe and it was becoming too much.
“It’s just that the hospitality trade is really tough, as anyone in it will tell you.
“People have asked if the problem was with the floods or with Dumfries and Galloway Council, but it is not. There are no issues and it is not a single thing, that’s the problem. It is a combination and a financial strain.
“The bike shop will stay open. It is successful and I will keep that running where it is until I find smaller, more manageable premises.
“I opened my first bike shop in Dumfries at Queen Street when I was 19 and I have repaired bikes every since.
“I am quite good with electronics so I can do the e-bikes too.”
Mr Anderson has no plans to re-enter the cafe business and added: “I will not have another cafe, not as the hospitality sector is just now. Everyone says the same thing since Covid.
“We have three full-time staff and two part-time and just before I broke the news to the public we had a staff meeting which was one of the worst meetings of my life.”
