A popular cocktail bar on Sparks Street will be closing its doors at the end of the year, and the co-owners already have their sights set on their next venture.
Stolen Goods Cocktail Bar, located at 106 Sparks St., opened its doors in the aftermath of the pandemic in 2022.
“We kept getting laid off from our jobs – brought back and laid off – and decided that we could probably take a risk and open our own bar. (We thought) maybe the timing would be good with COVID causing rents to be cheaper and more things to be available,” Mike Campbell, general manager and co-owner of Stolen Goods, told OBJ on Wednesday.
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The original plan, Campbell recalled, was for him and co-owner Adam Ghor to try operating a bar for five years, then pause to take a temperature check and see if running the business still made sense.
Since 2022, Stolen Goods has been “more successful than we could have ever guessed or hoped for, but it’s also been a lot of work,” Campbell said.
Now they’re setting up for their last pour. On Jan. 27, Campbell and Ghor, who is also the chef, announced on social media they would close Stolen Goods at the end of 2026.
Campbell told OBJ that he and Ghor want the story of Stolen Goods to end on a high note.
“This is our first venture and it’s pretty special to Adam and myself. We wanted to have a good run. We work every day (that) we’re open, so we could probably have put more staff on and work less, but we didn’t want to dilute what we created,” he said. “This way, if we close this business, anything else that we do after this can come from a different place. We did this thing from start to finish and got to do it together.”
And they’ve chosen to give patrons until the end of the year to say their goodbyes.
“It means a lot of things to a lot of people. So by giving people the ability to come in one last time and enjoy it for the last year, it gives us a runway to do some crazier ideas that we wouldn’t have done had (the community) not known we were closing,” Campbell said.
Patrons will have the year to say goodbye to the bar’s team and, more importantly, to the raccoon branding that has become emblematic of the business.
“When we started, we initially had a fox as our animal logo. But when we opened, we put up this raccoon wallpaper in the bathroom and it kind of spiraled into people bringing us raccoon decor. There’s a hand-drawn chalk painting in the bar of a raccoon. At this point, we just lean into it,” Campbell said.
“It’s also kind of a symbol of Ottawa,” he added, referring to the viral 2014 video taken at the now-defunct Rideau Street McDonald’s where someone pulled a baby raccoon out of their jacket.
For its last year, Stolen Goods is planning on hosting several pop-up events with other local businesses, as well as a big hurrah for the last day of operations on Dec. 31.
“We have a lot of crazy things planned,” Campbell said. “We want to get all of our friends in as often as we can to do whatever crazy pop-up they want to do. We give a platform to people that don’t have their own restaurant to come in and take over the space for a day or two. We definitely want New Year’s Eve to be the biggest party we’ve ever done and I imagine, in December, it’ll probably be a party every day.”
Though Stolen Goods would probably have benefited from more employees coming back to work in downtown offices and the ongoing efforts to revitalize the core, Campbell said continuing to operate the cocktail bar would take away from other projects he and Ghor want to pursue.
“With the things we want to open and see created, we wouldn’t be able to do that while continuing to operate (Stolen Goods) as is … With this closing, we’ll be able to create new businesses together with the plan of overseeing them, instead of being inside the business every day.”
So when the last patron leaves on Dec. 31 – or the wee hours of Jan. 1 – Campbell and Ghor will get to work on their next venture.
“We hopefully have at least one, but it’s looking more like two projects starting up for us,” he told OBJ. “I can’t get into too much detail, but they’re definitely going to be in the downtown core, catering to some of our existing clientele and, hopefully, some new clientele. (It’ll have) some earlier hours and will hopefully open within the first quarter of 2027.”
While many have expressed sadness at the news of Stolen Goods closing, Campbell said he and Ghor are choosing to look at it as a “glass half-full” situation.
“We’re super-happy that we get to do this. We’re not closing like how most restaurants close. We’re taking a pause and evolving into some new things,” Campbell said.
