The pandemic has forced many small businesses across the country to close their doors for good, but one family-owned food stop in the heart of downtown Ottawa has managed to persevere.

Spring Chips is a food truck-style restaurant based in Byward Market, where they sell deep-fried spiral-cut potatoes on a stick, otherwise known as “spring stix.” They have been able to keep the business on its feet in spite of restrictions and reduced capacity limits, due in part to the lack of indoor or outdoor seating. The restaurant consists of a small storefront, about 30 square metres, where the food is prepared. On any given day, there are only three or four employees working at a time.

The business is owned and run by Hamza, who has asked CHUO not to use his last name due to a conflict of interest with his second job, as well as members of his family.

The restaurant was originally owned by a family friend living in Toronto, who brought it to Ottawa in 2019, eventually allowing Hamza and his father to take over operations.

“I moved up to Ottawa and he came here for a weekend, and he was interested in bringing it up, so we started in the Byward Market,” says Hamza. “He had a baby, so he had to go back down to Toronto. So we were going to shut it down, but my dad is retired and I was up here working, and I had time after work and on the weekend, so I asked [my dad] if it was something that he would be interested in. So one thing led to another, and now we just run the show in a seasonal fashion.”

Hamza says the business has grown quite a bit since he took over operations, and they have started appearing at musical festivals and events around the city.

Spring Chips’ summer home is in the Byward Market, but it moves around the city during the rest of the year. Hamza says Spring Chips has previously set up shop at Hope Volleyball Festival, Escapade and the Casino Lac-Leamy Sound of Lights fireworks display. Most recently, they participated in the holiday market at Lansdowne Place.

“It's incredible how many people we are feeding and it's a really awesome feeling because  people come out to Lansdowne… wanting to do something together as family, and when you're going through hundreds and thousands of families and feeding them and they're having a good time and they're coming back and saying they love the stix, it's a good feeling even though it's exhausting,” says Hamza.

Spring Chips enjoyed a successful year in 2021 after a year-long hiatus in 2020 due to COVID-19. Hamza says the uncertainty of the pandemic combined with his concern for his aging father, who works the fryer at the restaurant, forced him to temporarily close down shop.

“There was a lot of unknowns,” says Hamza. “And just the fact that eating food in the COVID environment wasn't something that was comfortable. So we just took a year where we weren't operating. It was definitely a hard year because we were still paying a lot of things off.”

After reemerging in the spring of 2021, the business saw renewed success in Byward with the return of tourists. They were so busy that they decided to prolong their tenancy until the end of October before moving on to Lansdowne for the holiday market.

Hamza says the pandemic is still posing some challenges when it comes to finding employees to work for him.

“We're constantly looking for people,” says Hamza. “I think maybe the students haven't come back yet because they're still half online, half here. Being a small business, it's very hard to … raise the price where we're competitive with, let's say, Costco. Will students work at Costco or Loblaws, or will they work for a local vendor? We do try to have our pricing so our people get a lot more tips, and we do try to be more accommodating, but the hardest aspect of running the business is definitely finding people.”

According to Hamza, he was a recent graduate when he started running Spring Chips, so he understands the plight of many students who struggle with debt from student loans. He primarily hires students, and he says they often return season after season.

Emilie Aloeristok is a student in her fourth year at the University of Ottawa. She began working for Spring Chips in November for the Lansdowne Holiday Market.

“My exam schedule can be irregular, so they provide flexible hours for me to be able to work around my school schedule and my volunteer schedule and still make enough money to be able to afford tuition,” says Aloeristok.

She says she appreciates sometimes receiving free food on her breaks, and she added that the food is “really good.”

Brianna Wood is finishing up her last year of biopharmaceutical studies at the University of Ottawa. She has previously worked as a server and has had trouble finding work throughout the pandemic because of the impact COVID-19 restrictions have had on the food-service  industry. 

Wood says she was thankful when Hamza offered her a job, as she says it was difficult to find a workplace willing to accommodate her busy school schedule.

“I knew Hamza through my last job, which was working at Rideau,” says Wood. “So when he reached out to me, asking if I had employment… I was really happy to accept because I thought that… I would really enjoy it.”

Wood says working for Spring Chips at the Lansdowne Holiday Market was an overall positive experience. 

“I really liked all my coworkers there,” says Wood. “I also really liked the market that we were working in. Everyone there was super positive and upbeat. I don't think I even remember having to deal with any customers that were rude or aggressive. That was always a benefit.”

Hamza says he sees the business model of iconic Canadian family-owned businesses such as Beavertails as something to aspire to, but as Spring Chips is still in its infancy, he can’t picture his business reaching such a degree of popularity in the near-future.

“I don't see the business model being like a Beavertails or like a Tim Horton’s or any of that,” says Hamza. “I could see it more so along the lines of a venue-specific, with different teams going out to do different venues. To have it as a franchisable item is not something that we currently see. But that's not to say that it won't change down the road. We changed from 2019, to 2020, to 2021 quite a bit, so we're always open to new opportunities.”

Hamza says he is looking forward to continuing to share Spring Chips with the residents of Ottawa for as long as he can. He says the “ten-year plan” for Spring Chips is to seek out more places around the city where they can “feed tourists, Canadians, and help people come together.”

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