Business is booming at the new Queen Street Chickenburger, but not
everyone can enter. Accessibility advocate Gus Reed says the new
restaurant might as well have posted a sign on the doors saying people
in wheelchairs are not welcome.
Reed has created an online pledge to boycott Chickenburger until it
provides access to the inside dining area for wheelchair users, including accessible
washrooms.
He is especially concerned that if wheelchair users can’t even get
into the restaurant, it will be impossible for them to work there.
“I hope that by going to the public in some way, that something will
happen,” says Reed.
“We are going to see what we can do,” says Chickenburger owner Mickey MacDonald. MacDonald claims the historic nature of the building prevented
it from being wheelchair accessible in the first place.
And MacDonald is not concerned that Chickenburger is unable to employ
people who use wheelchairs. “Due to the nature of the
business, you’re dealing with food, hot food a lot of the time and
it’d be hard for people in wheelchairs to be working at a restaurant
anyway,” he says.
As Reed see it, the solution for Chickenburger is simple: just build a ramp
to get into the inside dining, which he assumes would probably not be
prohibitively expensive. Reed says the bigger problem is that building codes
don’t require businesses to be wheelchair accessible.
Wheelchair accessibility is an issue for other stores in the Spring
Garden area, in particular Jennifer’s of Nova Scotia, says Reed. “If
you’re in a wheelchair you can’t come in and complain, how will they
ever know that you want to get in their store? There are any number of
places that are difficult because of the steepness of the ramps or
they don’t have doors that are very useful, the accessibility of
Spring Garden road is ‘C+’ at best.”
Update: Gus Reed has detailed his complaint about Chickenburger on his blog.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2012.
He spoils his case by complaining about the inability of physically impaired people to work in a fast food restaurant.
It’s the owner Mickey Macdonald who says that people in wheelchairs couldn’t work in fast food, not Reed. Reed says they can’t work in the restaurant if they can’t get in to it, which seems logical.
As someone with a physical disability who works on Spring Garden Road I must say it is the absolute worst place to work for someone with a disability and I often encourage others with a disability to look outside the down town core for employment. This shouldn’t be the case and I believe a number of businesses on Spring Garden have made great efforts to improve the accessibility of their stores. Unfortunately they only represent about 10 percent of businesses that are accessible down town. Today it is raining and it is great that Chicken Burger has made their takeout accessible so I could eat in the parking lot while my co-workers look at me out the window of the dinning area. Absolutely crazy to think that minority groups and people of other races were served out of back doors, weren’t allowed in stores, and also had no access to public transportation. Just something to think about. Thank you Gus!
JUST DO IT ~~ Boycott the Chickenburger! Shame on the Halifax city mayor and council, MacDonald and all the others who ignore the accessibility issues for their lack of respect integrity.
Bethany – Why would a person in a wheelchair want to work in a fast food outlet ? Consider the safety aspect and the need to work at any job from frying burgers to cleaning the toilets. Staff are expected to be able to do any job in an outlet.
In the Chickenburger outlet there are tables and chairs and very little room yo move, it is a conversion from a house to a business to another business.
Please don’t compare not being able to get into a business with racial discrimination.
If you want everything downtown to be accessible, let people make structural changes to historic buildings with as few restrictions as possible.
I think this story is a bit unfair in the sense that it singles out one specific restaurant in downtown Halifax. I’m a firm believer in accessibility, but if as a society this is something we hope to improve then the cost of renovating old buildings in the city can’t just fall on to small business. We all must be willing to contribute in the form of taxation to offset the renovation costs for our local businesses.
The fact that the ChickenBurger is not accessible to Patrons is not right and this should be rectified. However, close to half if not more of the restaurants/businesses in the DT are not accessible. Might as well list those and boycott them too.
As for accessibility in the kitchen; how many restaurants in HRM have an accessible kitchen? Probably is less than 5%. Is this right? Probably not, but it is a harsh reality. Food equipment manufacturers do not make accessible fryers, grills, etc. This does not take into account the cramped high paced cooking environment. Can a person with a mobility disability work in a kitchen, sure but it’s not likely practical or safe in most cases to the worker and the ones surrounding them.
Kithchem aside, in this case, a person with a wheelchair could not even work behind the counter or even at the cash.
Singling out one business will not fix the problem. It is industry wide and with society as a whole. Let’s look at the big picture. Will I boycott the Chickenburger? Well I haven’t gone there in years because portions have shrunk and prices have risen.
Gus Reed notes the Chickenburger because it’s a newly-opened establishment. Sure there are others but this is another example of how lax accessibility standards are in Halifax.
Gus Reed notes the Chickenburger because it is a newly opened restaurant. Sure others exist but the newly opened places should be highlighted because it shows how lax the accessibility standards are in HRM.
The size of the building’s seating area is small and made smaller by a brick fireplace in the center which is structural in these old buildings and cannot be removed. there is simply no room inside the seating area to accomodate a regular wheel chair let alone anything the size of the commonplace scooters. The staff working areas are even smaller… They have made excellent use of the space they had to work with, without altering the building’s exterior too much. One of the bathrooms is equipped with a larger door and hand rails.
What would it matter if the bathroom door is wider and there are hand rails? Making a building accessible in no way takes away from the structural integrity of a building and if addressed at the time of renovating this historic piece of property is less expensive, or if the bathroom is accessible already you probably wouldn’t even see an increase in the cost of construction. It was an oversight by HRM and I think they should flip the bill to make the inside accessible to everyone. I have no problem or dislike toward Mickey and I am pretty sure Guss feels the same way, he would just like to have a chicken burger and sit inside with his friends and will probably be the first person to do so when they put a ramp in.
When was the last time you seen a person in a wheel chair working behind the counter at McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s?. I can totally understand the frustration from individuals with disabilities not being able to access all stores do to lack of ramps ext. and something should be done to make these locations more inviting but lets be real for a minute not every retail or none retail spot in the world can be made to be more accommodating for individuals with disabilities which goes way beyond the use of just wheel chairs. So instead of protesting or centering someone out that is just trying to make a living which is just as unfair as it is to the individual with the complaint maybe we should focus on working together as adults to solve the issue one door at a time. There are plenty of chicken burgers for sale in the downtown core.
I appreciate the working together and people with disabilities have tried the approach for years and in most cases nothing has changed. Now a prominent business owner is placed in the spotlight and its in the news, in the papers, people talking about it on line and now Mickey is doing the right thing and making the Chicken Burger Accessible. Thank you Mickey and look forward to going to your restaurant. And again people in Wheelchairs don’t represent every Nova Scotian with a disability and working in a restaurant is not what people are getting at its the option to even apply to a business that is not accessible. Finding a job is hard enough for anyone but compound that with cutting your options in half because you can’t get in the door or I have heard of people with a disability working at a store but they have to wheel down the street to use the bathroom at a Tim Hortons because the washroom is not accessible and they are to scared to kick up a fuss because the feel they may loose their job. Sounds crazy I know but situations like this still happen in Nova Scotia.
I’ve been all over Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, and I’ve eaten in tons of establishments from 5 star down to dives, but I can’t ever recall in some 50 years ever seeing a person in a wheelchair working in any eating establishment, not even those that had all the best of accessiblity features. I think Reed ruins his argument by reaching too far to make points.
Trish Gavin, I find opinions like your own are what hold back progress by making people fight instead of encouraging them to work together. Also, person’s in wheelchairs are a very small percentage of person’s in HRM, and even if by some stroke of genius you could figure out how to get 100% working together on this issue, you would still be left with a very tiny number of people boycotting, even if friends and family of those in wheelchairs were to participate. Couple that with the fact that of the small percentage of our population who are in wheelchairs, a large percentage of that small percentage are disadvantaged financially, so don’t have the money to go to the Chicken Burger anyway, or any other takeout / eatin establishment. From a business point of view nobody is going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make an historic building accessible if the returns are going to result in a large negative return.
Reed should get a goddam life if he can’t do that then develop a taste for pork or beef or how about hot dogs made from dog poop?