BARRIE — Mandarin restaurants around the country offered free meals to anyone with a Canadian citizenship to celebrate Canada Day.
Line-ups began in the early morning hours Monday.
Alex Bai is the managing partner of Barrie's 28 Fairview Rd. location and has been doing the free giveaway promotion for four of the five years it has been happening.
“Everybody is feeling great, the staff are excited and the customers are looking forward to the doors opening, one lady has been here since 5:30 a.m. so you can tell people love this,” said Bai.
He said the celebration is two-fold as Mandarin is not only honouring all Canadian citizens with a free meal, but also celebrating the company’s 40th anniversary.
Bai knew it would be busy, but definitely worth it for those who made it from the first seating at 12 p.m. to the last seating at 8:30 p.m.
“We already see a couple hundred people out there now and we still have some time before the doors open, so I feel we will have over a thousand for sure,” Bai said just before the restaurant opened.
The promotion hasn’t been without its controversy, as some people have complained it is unfair to non-Canadian citizens who feel left out of the fun.
Dakota North, who was in line since 5:30 a.m., told BarrieToday she does find it unfair, but admits she really wanted to have the buffet experience.
“I think the whole thing is terrific, but I know there is a lot of controversy about making it only for Canadian citizens and someone came in with a driver’s licence and was told it had to be a birth certificate. That really disappointed me,” said North.
“But I’m hungry and it’s not that often I get a meal like this, so I will be participating.”
Ryan Levesque and his family heard about the promotion on Facebook and decided to get in line at 10 a.m., a little later than others.
“Some people were here when we got here and you could tell they’d been here for a while,” said Levesque. “This is really generous of the company to do this and they’ve been really good, too, bringing water out to people in the heat. We definitely will come again, just maybe a little earlier.”
