My wife and I lease a small bistro from a bowling club and have done for the last 2 and a bit years. There was an option clause in the contract with the standard no later than three months bla bla.
The club secretary reminded us of this option with about 4-5months on our lease. With in a couple of weeks ( well inside the three months), we had a meeting with my wife, myself, the club president and another director with regards to some general business, including that the club had a really good finacial year thanks to the bistro increasing weekday trading, in turn increasing the bar's (club) revenue.
At this time, they also asked if we were happy to stay on, which we confirmed that we were happy to under the current agreement, to which the representatives of the club were happy about. There was only one thing: they asked us to take up Sunday breakfast trade, to which we replied "it has not been financially viable to do so in the past so I dont think we will."
Several weeks past and the club informed my wife that they were advertising that we would start breakfast the week after the October long weekend. I went in and told the president that we had discussed this and we had no intention of doing so as it was outside the clubs trading hours and also outside our minimum trading hours outlined in the contract.
Within a matter of days of me stating that we had no reason to trade the breakfast as it was not financially worth it for us and the club was not even open so there would be no finacial gain or risk for them, the president came to us and said that we had not exercised our written option as per the contract, to which I questioned the previous meeting where we discussed and confirmed our intent to stay.
Long story short, after a couple of months, they finally handed us a contract which obviously has the Sunday breakfast trading hours added to the minimum hours and the rent has doubled per month.
Do we have a leg to stand on in regards to the verbal agreement between representatives of the club and ourselves?
Thanks
The club secretary reminded us of this option with about 4-5months on our lease. With in a couple of weeks ( well inside the three months), we had a meeting with my wife, myself, the club president and another director with regards to some general business, including that the club had a really good finacial year thanks to the bistro increasing weekday trading, in turn increasing the bar's (club) revenue.
At this time, they also asked if we were happy to stay on, which we confirmed that we were happy to under the current agreement, to which the representatives of the club were happy about. There was only one thing: they asked us to take up Sunday breakfast trade, to which we replied "it has not been financially viable to do so in the past so I dont think we will."
Several weeks past and the club informed my wife that they were advertising that we would start breakfast the week after the October long weekend. I went in and told the president that we had discussed this and we had no intention of doing so as it was outside the clubs trading hours and also outside our minimum trading hours outlined in the contract.
Within a matter of days of me stating that we had no reason to trade the breakfast as it was not financially worth it for us and the club was not even open so there would be no finacial gain or risk for them, the president came to us and said that we had not exercised our written option as per the contract, to which I questioned the previous meeting where we discussed and confirmed our intent to stay.
Long story short, after a couple of months, they finally handed us a contract which obviously has the Sunday breakfast trading hours added to the minimum hours and the rent has doubled per month.
Do we have a leg to stand on in regards to the verbal agreement between representatives of the club and ourselves?
Thanks
