Captain John asks his fans to help bail him out
In the latest episode of the ongoing saga of Captain John’s Seafood Restaurant, owner John Letnik has made the increasingly popular move of soliciting donations to save his iconic 42-year-old floating harbourfront restaurant. Letnik got into a dispute over taxes four years ago, and now owes more than $500,000 in back taxes and rent, a sum that led the city to cut off the water to his restaurant this summer, closing it down and effectively shutting off Letnik’s cash flow. In addition to donating, visitors to the Save Captain John! site are asked to sign a petition calling for the city, Waterfront Toronto and the Toronto Port Authority to “Stop the unfair treatment of John Letnik.” Though he’s been trying to sell the business since 2009, as Torontoist reports, buyers for an aging restaurant boat on a month-to-month lease with the city are in short supply. [Torontoist]
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In the latest episode of the ongoing saga of Captain John’s Seafood Restaurant, owner John Letnik has made the increasingly popular move of soliciting donations to save his iconic 42-year-old floating harbourfront restaurant. Letnik got into a dispute over taxes four years ago, and now owes more than $500,000 in back taxes and rent, a sum that led the city to cut off the water to his restaurant this summer, closing it down and effectively shutting off Letnik’s cash flow. In addition to donating, visitors to the Save Captain John! site are asked to sign a petition calling for the city, Waterfront Toronto and the Toronto Port Authority to “Stop the unfair treatment of John Letnik.” Though he’s been trying to sell the business since 2009, as Torontoist reports, buyers for an aging restaurant boat on a month-to-month lease with the city are in short supply. [Torontoist]){kind=link}
I was going to donate to sick kids but an awful restaurant seems just as virtuous.
This guy needs to move on… and pay his tax bill before leaving.
I would pay him to leave and never return!
Someone need to give this guy some poppers and make him wake up and face reality! Go away. Your business has been dead for ages!!!
time to set sail….if this boat is a boat it’ll float…if not let it sink. he should have sued before the taxes added up to a half million, it could have settled by now…sell it for whatever he can get for it…nobody is guaranteed a retirement and i hope nobody donates to this lost cause…
he is like the maestro on seinfeld and gets very upset if you don’t call him captain…
It’s sad but he is the one that dug the whole.
He never updated the boat, never painted the restaurant sign, and the food is terrible. In the summer, he has no staff at the end of the boat to say hello to visitors. No wonder he is broke
You couldn’t have paid me to set foot on this atrocity, ever. He can’t employ anyone because it would be a complete embarrassment, and likely health risk, to work on this thing. It is a terrible eyesore and Toronto needs to give the Captain and his boat the boot.
My 20 year old daughter chose this restaurant for her birthday dinner a few years ago. We have never had a worse experience eating out than we did at Captain John’s. The food was horrible. The service was glacial and the mistakes made inexcusable. We were presented with a $400 plus bill for 3 adults, one child, no liquor.
It has become one of our family stories – “Remember when we ate at that terrible restaurant?”
Let it go, don’t give this guy a cent.
Donations? Yes, donate the service of a tug boat, tug the ugly monster out to the deepest part of Lake Ontario, sink it and let it RIP.
They were nice people just trying to make a living……..