Former tie-dye clothing mogul and scorned local bakery entrepreneur Pepper Foster is being sued by Canada’s largest bank for nearly $700,000.
According to a claim filed by the Royal Bank of Canada last week, Foster did not make payments on a credit agreement and business Visa account, both signed for last year, and now owes $681,988.
“In breach of the credit agreement and the Visa agreement, the borrower has neglected or refused and continues to neglect or refuse to pay the remaining debt and liabilities to the bank,” the claim document reads.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES
Pepper (left) and Chip Foster bought KUB Bread in January of 2022. Eighteen months later, no bread is baking amid allegations of missed payments and mismanagement.
Winnipeg-born Foster and his twin brother Chip had a Saturday-morning cartoon on U.S. network TV and a surf-inspired clothes line in the 1980s and ’90s.
They returned to the headlines about 18 months ago after they announced they would be resurrecting Winnipeg’s beloved KUB bakery after its previous owner had closed the doors. However a year later, without their own large-scale production facility and no bread on Winnipeg shelves, Pepper Foster said he was having trouble breaking into the industry.
Foster said Tuesday that he’s “now putting plans in place to repay the RBC” and that the loan was taken out as part of his attempt to revitalize the KUB brand.
“Unfortunately, even with the loan, we did not have enough runway to turn the company around in time… I love the brand and wish we could have saved it as a team for Winnipeg, not as an individual,” he said in a text message Tuesday.
Former KUB bread co-owner Ross Einfeld said he’s still waiting to see what the future of brand will be.
He said the Fosters agreed to a tiered payment plan with him, and the final payment isn’t due for another year. Pepper Foster currently owes him about US$119,000, he said, along with outstanding fees from purchasing bread-making equipment.
If that money doesn’t materialize, Einfeld said he’ll take back the brand.
“Once he defaults, we plan on just talking to a lawyer and just getting a judgment saying, ‘Look, he hasn’t bothered to pay, we’re going to take our trademarks back. And at that juncture, once I take the court order, I can put it up for sale again,” he said.
Einfeld worries that the longer the brand stays off shelves, the more value it will lose.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES
KUB Bread’s former owner Ross Einfeld is still waiting for payment.
“It could be almost like starting from scratch,” he said. “There’s a certain cachet to that name, a lot of people haven’t forgot it. But a lot of people have.”
In January, the owner of Selkirk’s Upper Crust bakery said he gave Foster financial control of his business in a partnership to produce KUB bread that quickly turned sour and forced him to close his doors for weeks.
Two months later, Pennyloaf Bakery on Corydon Avenue closed after Foster became involved in its ownership and operation. Staff told the Free Press they had quit en masse after concerns with Foster’s management of the business. The other buyer, Winnipeg accountant James Fiebelkorn, said he regretted partnering with Foster and put the building up for sale.
Fiebelkorn said the building was unsold, as of Tuesday. He added he’s happy to hear legal action is being taken, but questions remain as to how Foster was able to borrow that much money without the sales to back it up.
“To me, it just seems wrong,” he said.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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