The owner of a Montreal restaurant recently suspended a program offering free meals to those in need after receiving a warning from the OQLF, Quebec’s language watchdog, because promotions on social media for his restaurant did not include French.
“I received a letter from the OQLF in regards to my social media. A couple people made a complaint about our social media being predominantly in English.” said Abdul Raziq Khan, the owner of Mama Khan restaurant.
“Unfortunately, we did not follow the rules. We had a warning and due to that we took some safer steps to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Khan paused his program called ‘Pay it forward’ for a few days because the tickets placed on the wall of his restaurant were in English and he won’t receive new ones with French until June 27. But now, in the meantime, Khan has decided to continue offering free meals without the tickets, people just have to ask for one at the counter.
“Now I know, and that’s the reason why we ordered the French tickets,” explained Khan, adding, “So we can respect the law. I feel like the province has to have some type of guidance when it comes to new business owners. Because the fact that I’m new, I did not know. So there must be other business owners as well that don’t know these rules”.
Mama Khan restaurant serves Pakistani cuisine and their ‘Pay it forward’ program has served more than 700 free hot meals since it started last year in September. For every $5 that is donated to the program, a free vegetarian meal is offered to someone in need.
“We’re going to get our French tickets coming in June 27 and from there we’re going to be full force. If I could have François Legault come in down to our restaurant, put the first ticket on the wall to show some type of good relation between us,” said Khan, “there’s no better way than to have the person in charge come down and start it up for us.”