BunkHaus Has Big First Birthday Plans

Unlike most one-year old infants, BunkHaus on Water Street in uptown Saint John will be sure to remember its first birthday.

Hostel and café owner Ingrid Woodhouse, who is from Quispamsis, is throwing a big birthday bash on Thursday, July 11 to celebrate its first year of business.

When asked why she opened BunkHaus, Woodhouse explained, “I noticed Saint John didn’t really have a great option for combinations of people who are travelling on a budget or for people who have a desire for a social travel experience meeting people.  I just wanted to do something different.  When reservations slowed down in October, I decided that we needed something else, so I did a quick renovation to add the café.  It opened December 7 and we’ve been doing the café since then.”

The hostel-café has housed a wide range of travelers since its opening, as evidenced by the smorgasbord of pins in the giant world map on the BunkHaus’ wall, marking from where they travelled.

“Most commonly we have a lot of couples travelling together, and a lot of solo travelers.  Our oldest guest was eighty-four, eighty-five from California, and we’ve had some other guests around there too in that age bracket,” added Woodhouse.

Woodhouse wants BunkHaus to provide guests with a unique social experience. “We want people to come and meet new people.  Don’t just go to the isolated hotel room, to come out, hang out in the café, hang out in the common area and kitchen there, cook with other people, go out and have and drinks and supper with other people, building community while travelling.”

BunkHaus has a lot to be proud of since it opened last summer and quickly established itself as a local hub of activity and community.  “We have our regulars who are mostly here every day and we still have people learning about it all the time,” said Woodhouse.

“The Saturday Morning Cartoons event was very popular, we paused that for right now.” (The event will return in September).  BunkHaus has also been a community for music and art. “Music gets a few people out; we usually have one or two live artists a week.  We had a temporary display of paintings up from a local artist, Shauna Gass, but we are definitely open to having more features here.”

When asked whether the BunkHaus has become an integral part of Saint John’s Uptown area, the twenty-nine-year-old entrepreneur was tentatively hopeful.

“Water Street hasn’t really been a place to open a business because there is no foot traffic really here.  But because I was opening a hostel I didn’t really need to rely on foot traffic, mostly people booking ahead.  And when the café came it brought a lot of guests eating and hanging out here.”

“It has been cool to see that the locals are starting to wander down to Water Street and bringing it to life because once you bring foot traffic to the street that’s when it really comes to life.  We have parties that also drive it a bit too, and we have a really great view of the fireworks from here.”

The BunkHaus’ big milestone led to Woodhouse thinking about future plans.  She explained, “I would like a few more locations.  Often times when people stay here they come to me asking if we have more locations because they would like to stay at the next Bunkhaus, and the next Bunkhaus.  I think it would be really cool to have kind of a mini-chain just in Atlantic Canada.  Whether or not that happens we will see, but that is kind of the idea right now.”

For more information about the BunkHaus’ first birthday bash, visit their Facebook page.