"The Harbour House Hotel was where I worked before coming here," Sheena recalls. "Honestly, I've been in and out of the hospitality industry for a long time. Growing up, my family owned a marina, so I was always around that environment. We were constantly serving people, whether they needed boat repairs or fuel. So you had a lot of communication and that kind of customer experience."

"Phillip and I started the place together," says Sheena. "He was basically in charge of getting the venue; he was already opening this place up when I came along. We were friends before we opened it, and he had been thinking about opening it up by himself. But when we got to talking about it, he said he wanted to do a partnership, so right on the spot, I just said, 'Okay, sure, let's do this.'

What Phillip brought was his idea of energy, which really set the tone for how this place moved forward. He is an entertainer and has this big, deep, booming voice, so people would come in a lot for that factor. He has that magnetic personality. And then on top of that, we also had the quality food, quality drinks, and quality service to back up that game. But his personality definitely was a big part of it. He left behind just that sense of loud music, fun, and an environment that doesn't have to be so serious all the time. It’s about being brave enough to feel the moment — just being engaged in it and not having to revert to a script.

I know that a lot of businesses have certain standards they want to keep, and I understand why, but we've gone in a direction where you don't have to be so rigid. You're allowed to smile, you're allowed to show your personality, and you're allowed to have fun while still making it an experience for a lot of people. Most people come in smiling, but if someone comes in without a smile, they often leave smiling because they've had a real experience. They've been a part of the group, they're included in the joke, and they're never left out. They just feel like family. And it makes customers feel like family. When a community unites like that, it's wonderful."

"It was more about what I didn't want to bring from the big hotel industry into a smaller place," Sheena explains. "I didn't want to bring the corporate, cookie-cutter routine that comes with being in a bigger industry. A lot of times at the bigger restaurants I've worked at, you get trained to say this, do this, and act a certain way. Your personality is completely washed out of it.

And so, for here, I hire my employees — I've got quite a few at the moment — based on who they are. Experience is a foot in the door, but your personality is what attracts me more. I can teach you how to make a coffee, I can teach you how to cook, and I can teach you how to serve customers, but I can't teach personality. So that's a big, important thing for me: to have a building that's full of life, personality, and fun.

I give everybody who comes to work at the cafe a two-hour trial shift on the busiest day of the week to see if they can handle the pressure of the building itself, because it is a very small building and it's very busy. We are extremely busy at the moment, especially going into summertime, so we've got lineups out the door and around the corner most of the day. It's a constant flow. So if you can keep smiling and keep laughing at the end of a shift where you have that much pressure on you to perform, then you're my people. That's definitely a hard thing to do — it's all about the energy of the people. That’s kind of what makes the team all jolly, happy, and smiley. Everyone is a different character, so everybody's got something to bring to the table — a little spice."

"My current partner is Lou Ellis," Sheena says. "She’s been a part of Shirley Delicious since the beginning, but she lives on Salt Spring Island, so initially she was just coming over and helping us. She helped us establish all of our initial bakery items. Our gluten-free flour mix is the result of her years of mixing and perfecting, so a lot of the baked goods and the initial muffin recipes are all hers. She brought the bakery aspect to the business.

When Phil first approached me about moving away from the business, I approached Lou and said, 'You're taking over, right? You're going to come and do this with me, right?' She hummed and hawed a little bit in the beginning, but she definitely came around. It was a lot of commitment because she still lives on Salt Spring Island. She comes over here once every week or every other week, depending on the season, stays for a couple of days, and then goes home. It's a big commitment, but she's been doing it since the end of 2020."

"Initially, I thought we were losing the restaurant," Sheena admits. "It was really tricky because we were told we weren't allowed to have anyone dining in. Essentially, right off the bat, we had to close the place down for six weeks. Since we weren't allowed to have anyone inside, I panicked and just started to hustle. People would send me Facebook messages asking, 'Can I buy some coffee beans?' and I'd reply, 'Absolutely, I'll meet you there.' I did just anything to keep some sort of revenue coming in during those first six weeks.

After that, we adapted the setup. The way our building is laid out, we have a door at the front and a door at the side. We decided to use the front door for ordering and the side door for pickup, turning the entire building into a giant food truck. But even that came with its own problems. My staff were inside their bubble, but people outside were ordering and complaining that we were too close together or too exposed. There was just so much hype and anxiety around it. It got to the point where I actually panic-bought a shipping container setup. It's essentially a food truck — it's not on wheels and doesn't drive, but it has a full food truck setup with all the necessary equipment. We bought it hoping that if the restaurant couldn't thrive, we would have a backup. As it turned out, that container sat empty for four years. Once we opened up the front and side doors, we were able to keep going, and in fact, business got bigger and busier.

But it absolutely was a struggle, because our business is entirely based on the customer experience. You just can't give someone that experience when you're behind a mask, behind glass, and passing food through a window saying, 'Here's your food.' It's just not the same. You couldn't even have a normal conversation — all of that was taken away. Our loud music, our happiness, and our joy were just stuck behind plexiglass. We had to cover up, and everything changed. But at the same time, the pandemic started driving people from the cities into here. A lot more people were making their way out to the forests and the beaches. So in the end, both the locals and the tourists were going to have to find a way to coexist.

A lot of people were escaping Victoria because they wanted to get away from the crowds, so this entire region got really busy. We had so many tourists and travelers coming this way. It was alarming to a lot of the locals because they didn't want their little bubble exposed to all these extra people, but in the end, it all worked itself out. After 20 months, we were finally able to reopen the inside of the cafe and welcome people back in."

"It really set off a trend of this area being a lot more exposed, with people talking about how beautiful it is," says Sheena. "Which it is, and it was going to happen eventually, but COVID really was the catalyst that brought more and more tourists here. It's to the point now where people are still astounded at how many visitors actually come out here. We have more people visiting this area in a day than actually live in the town. It's such a small town, so it's not a lot of space for that many people.

We wanted the tourists, but then, when we got so many of them, it became overwhelming for everybody — every business and every person who lived out here. All of a sudden, the beaches where you used to be able to go and walk your dog in the morning were completely inundated with travelers. It’s beautiful, and it was going to happen no matter what, but it happened so fast. The turnaround was just so abrupt.

Our restaurant is right in the middle of the rainforest, so we're kind of at the mercy of the weather out here. For beach walkers — who bring customers to us — surfers, and anybody who wants to come out and enjoy nature, this is a must-visit stop. There are some beaches out here I've never even seen or been to, and there are a lot of them. But you really can do all of it here."

"This place has been evolving since we opened," Sheena notes. "It started off as a very small business, in the sense that we just had a tray of muffins, a couple of loaves of bread, and a few ideas. Since then, we've expanded the building, the parking, and the seating area. We've also added an ice cream stand and created an area that right now is a walkway where people with dogs can get away from the main property while waiting for their food. We want to expand it even further. Because we own the land, we’ve had quite an evolution. We're not constrained by being on someone else's property, so we can build as we grow. Right now, we're working on just streamlining what we already have.

For the future, I’ve been wanting to do live music for a long time, which is why we built a stage here four years ago. I'd love to have a venue for live music. I just want this to be a place where people can gather, and as needs come up, we'll just keep evolving that way. In terms of future plans, I'm terrible at that — to be honest, I can't plan beyond this week, which is fair. I just keep going and everything seems to work out. If it doesn't work out, we just pivot and try again."