It
’s been less than a month since the Oasis was sold to the trio of Edgar Galvan, and Vinnie and Asish Singh but a staffing change has already taken place, despite the owners
’ initial assurance that the staff would remain.
The business partners recently let one of the bartenders go and replaced him with Galvan, who also has professional bartending experience, according to Vinnie Singh.
“What had happened basically when we took over the place... we [were] number crunching and we saw that there was no point to [keeping] one bartender because Edgar was bartending himself,” Singh says. The decision was not a personal one, he adds.
It was a business decision, he says, and one that seemed to make the most financial sense.
Singh and his partners officially took over Oasis on Feb 1. Last month, Singh told Xtra West that there would be few changes to the club. He said the existing staff would stay for now and the employees would be given an opportunity to be there.
When asked about the discrepancy between the decision to let the bartender go and his previous statement, Singh explains that it was something that he and the new owners had not expected to happen before they took over.
“We did not foresee that,” he says. “When we got there we thought, ‘Okay this is what’s going on... we need to save some costs over here and Edgar is going to work at the bar and he’s not going to take pay so we’re going to save money there.’”
Xtra West attempted to contact Joel, the bartender but was told he was not “free” to talk about it at the moment.
Meanwhile, Singh says he and his business partners plan to put the cost savings into building a reserve for some needed renovations. The owners plan to open the club seven days a week beginning in April and are contemplating adding more servers.
“We haven’t gotten rid of anybody else,” Singh says. “Right now, we haven’t decided to let anybody else go and I don’t think it’s going to boil down to that.”
Singh and his partners purchased the Oasis from the Davie Entertainment Zone after the latter group decided to focus on Score and the operation of a nearby apartment building. Oasis is one of only a handful of gay bars that remain on Davie St following the closure of other gay spaces during the last decade.
Before taking over the bar, Singh said the space would “absolutely” remain a gay space and the new owners planned to attract more of a dinner crowd by introducing some new menu items.