Verdun bar firebombed a third time
The Bar Social, on Wellington Street in Verdun, was firebombed for the third time this month early Tuesday.
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MarcG 09:26 on 2024-06-19 Permalink
Not saying this is necessarily the case here, but imagine being a normal person who likes to cook and your friends are family are like “hey you should open a restaurant that serves alcohol”, and you do. Is there someone who warns you of what that entails before you get too deep, like the commercial real estate agent or the liquor license bureaucrat?
DeWolf 10:35 on 2024-06-19 Permalink
Most bars and restaurants don’t get firebombed, MarcG. It’s not the cost of doing business in Montreal, it’s the cost of doing business with shady people.
MarcG 11:06 on 2024-06-19 Permalink
Ok, so if not all bars are pressured into a protection racket scheme, what circumstances do you think are behind these incidents? I’m asking this as a naive person btw, there’s no hidden tone.
Kevin 12:40 on 2024-06-19 Permalink
Never open a restaurant because you like to cook, because within a year you will hate cooking, and you will hate people. 🙂
As for firebombs, there are three main reasons in Montreal: forcing restaurateurs to use only certain suppliers; take out competition; and sending a message to the person who was already involved in shady business before deciding to open a restaurant or bar.
MarcG 14:11 on 2024-06-19 Permalink
Those first 2 reasons sound like they could happen to my hypothetical normal person.
Joey 15:12 on 2024-06-19 Permalink
So the only anecdote I have is from someone who took over a bar. After a few weeks the vice squad showed up basically to plead with them not to sell drugs. And the message was, basically, we know you’re going to sell drugs, please don’t sell drugs. Now the “you” in that sentence is doing a lot of work (the cops were pretty much equating selling drugs with allowing drugs to be sold on the premises), but the gist of it, I guess, is that notwithstanding MarcG’s example, most people who get into the hospitality industry are probably not just there to cook on a whim because they love it… Protection rackets, etc., are just the cost of doing business and probably don’t come as a surprise.
Ian 21:17 on 2024-06-19 Permalink
The protection racket is not a myth, lol.