An iconic building on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast will soon get a new lease on life, thanks to a neighbouring business.
Molly’s Reach, made popular by CBC television series Beachcombers, which ran from 1972 until 1990, has sat empty since 2023. The owners retired and put the restaurant up for sale, hoping someone would carry on the Molly’s Reach legacy.
Enter the owners of Black Bean Cafe, located just down the road from the iconic Gibsons restaurant.
David Bristow, who runs the cafe with his sister Becca, said they learned last fall that the lease on their longtime location along Marine Drive would end in January.
It came as “quite a shock,” David told the host of CBC’s The Early Edition, Stephen Quinn.
The Early Edition5:39Molly’s Reach gets new owners
The iconic restaurant made famous by The Beachcombers has been closed for over a year. The new owners share their plans.
He said the Black Bean Cafe has been at its current location for 20 years, and though it’s changed hands a couple of times, it’s become a pillar in the community.
So, the duo started looking for other locations — of which there are few on the Sunshine Coast, David said. Knowing that Molly’s Reach had been on the market for awhile, they called up the owners, and they made a deal.
“Obviously it’s a huge undertaking and a large responsibility to take over something as iconic as Molly’s Reach, but in a lot of ways, both the Black Bean and Molly’s Reach are like community hubs, so it made a lot of sense to kind of merge them,” David said.
The new Molly’s Reach, which will retain its name, is expected to open by the end of February.
The restaurant has since been featured on the Fox series Murder in a Small Town, which takes place in the fictional community of Gibsons and is based on a series of mystery novels by Canadian author L. R. Wright.
A real estate listing for the property says the customer areas were fully renovated in 2022, which kept the historical nature of the building in tact while modernizing the space. The listing, which was still active on the O’Reilly Real Estate Group’s website on Wednesday, showed the sale price as $150,000.
Becca said taking over the space means their cafe will have twice the amount of indoor seating.
“Our indoor seating is quite limited at our current cafe,” she said. “In the summer, we do have our patio, but in the winter we lose that.”
Becca said people in the community have been “lovely” and “supportive” as they learn of the change happening along the Gibsons waterfront.
“Honestly, the outpouring of support has been absolutely astonishing to us.”
