After one of their scooters was thrown through the window of a historic Calgary restaurant, an e-scooter operator is offering to pay for damages.
Between Monday night and Tuesday morning, an e-scooter was tossed into a window of Silver Inn, a family-owned Chinese restaurant in Calgary which has been in business since 1975.
Kwong Cheung, the owner of the restaurant on 27 Avenue and Centre Street North said that he received a call from a staff member telling him of the damages.
“We opened up on Tuesday morning, and one of my staff called me and told me that the window is broken and there’s a Bird scooter sitting inside,” said Cheung.
According to the City of Calgary, the main issue with e-scooters has being people riding on the pedestrian path instead of the bike path. As a result, the City put out more signage, required shared e-Scooter companies to have in-app messaging about riding on the pedestrian path, and bylaw officers have been patrolling the area.
The majority of the complaints have been regarding the Eau Claire area.
The city also said they have seen an increase in copycat crimes with scooters being thrown into the river and other incidents of vandalism and bad behaviour.
Other than the shattered window and a broken table, Cheung says that nothing was stolen from the restaurant.
But a broken window is still an unnecessary cost.
More pandemic pain
“We don’t need the out of pocket cost,” said Cheung, who explained that his restaurant is one of many that has been losing money due to the pandemic.
But after his daughter posted about it on Facebook, the incident gained attention, notably from Scott Lyons, the CEO of Bird Canada. Lyons offered to pay for the damages to the restaurant.
“Most restaurants in the city are losing money, us included,” said Cheung.
He added that the damage wouldn’t have been covered by insurance. The repair cost would’ve come out of his pocket.
Doing their part
“We all are aware of the challenges the restaurants are going through right now with COVID,” said Lyons.
“As a good corporate citizen, when you see something like that it pains you and you want to make it right.”
On Thursday afternoon (Sep.3) Cheung said that a representative from Bird Canada went to his restaurant and gave him the money to fix the damages.
