Vancouver restaurant Thank You Pizza takes on scooter company over parking spot

Devon Towler runs one of the more innovative restaurant spaces in Vancouver. During the day, 789 Gore Avenue in Chinatown is a popular brunch spot called Hunnybee. At night, it turns into Thank You Pizza and serves up margherita, pepperoni and mushroom pies.

The space itself doesn’t have a wood-fired oven (or space for one), so Towler operates that through a truck that sits outside his restaurant. It was never an issue until last summer, when a representative from Lime, the e-scooter company that recently launched in Vancouver, showed up outside the restaurant to measure the parking space as a potential spot for a fleet of scooters.

“I said to the guy, ‘Hey, what’s going on? Are you going to take our spot?’” Towler recalls. “He said, ‘No, we know you’re here, we’re looking at the space ahead of you.’ I said, OK, cool.’”

Six months went by and Towler got an email from another Lime representative saying that the company did indeed want the spot in question. Around the same time, the City of Vancouver approved the spot for Lime.

“It looked like Lime and the city agreed that it was a good spot for them—no one seemed to want to involve us,” Towler says, adding that it’s technically a parking spot that anyone has the right to park in. “And I like using Lime, I’m all for [the service it provides]. It would just have be nice if this multi-million-dollar company would have the least bit of compassion for a small business.”

Towler posted a video to Thank You Pizza’s Instagram page in which he points out different spots directly around the area that Lime could set up in. For Thank You Pizza, the space is crucial because it gives the restaurant the most exposure and the truck requires power from the restaurant that can’t be accessed in other spots.

The city, of course, triumphantly announced Lime’s debut in Vancouver in September. After Towler’s video started to go viral (and thanks to the numerous emails that Thank You’s supporters sent to the city and Lime), the company issued a statement to BCBusiness saying that it would find an alternate location.

“Lime’s goal is to connect the city and its residents with all Vancouver has to offer, including small businesses,” said Sonia Kandola, director of government relations at Lime, in the statement. “We conduct thorough community outreach before selecting any parking station location and feedback like this is exactly why we do so! Since our initial engagement in this area, new information has come to light that was not previously shared with us and we are working with Thank You Pizza and the City to find an appropriate solution that works for everyone.”

A Lime spokesperson also said that the location was never a done deal and the company was still in the process of soliciting the community. The company also noted that the other locations pointed out in Towler’s video were deemed not acceptable by the city and that Lime will continue working to find an appropriate solution.