Owners of historic Minneapolis restaurant burned down in protests speak out
Charles Stotts and Kacey White, owners of Town Talk Diner & Gastropub, join 'Fox & Friends.'
The owners of a historic restaurant in Minneapolis that was burned down by rioters told “Fox & Friends” on Monday that seeing the damage was “really emotional.”
Charles Stotts and Kacey White, the owners of Town Talk Diner & Gastropub, said their restaurant was burned down three days before it was set to reopen for outdoor service after months of being closed due to coronavirus.
“We first got a call on Thursday morning that one of our employees had biked down to see if everything was OK and she called us to let us know that the windows were broken out and the fire suppression system was on and it was a mess,” Stotts explained.
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“So we went down and we saw it and called the emergency restoration company to come and try to clean up what we could. Later on that day, they put some lumber over the windows because they were blown out.”
He went on to say that around 4:30 in the morning he and his wife Kacey “got a phone call telling us to tune into the TV real quick, so we tuned into the TV and you could see that it was our building that was set on fire.”
As she held back tears, White said once the area was secure and safe she and her husband went to the restaurant to see the damage.
“To actually see the historic sign in the rubble, it’s really emotional,” she said.
Chaos broke out in many cities across the nation over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Video showed Floyd was in custody when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on the man’s neck. Floyd screamed for help and later died in a hospital. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, authorities said Friday.
White said insurance will cover part of the cost to rebuild, adding that “that’s just a drop in the bucket for everything that’s lost.”
“We’ve been shut down now for months because of COVID and now how much longer are we out of work,” she said.
White went on to say that insurance “doesn’t cover the bond, the spot that the neighbors keep going to day after day.”
“We have a team that was looking and excited to be back at work … today now that we could have opened for patio service,” she continued. “That team doesn’t have jobs anymore and that location will never get back, so insurance doesn’t cover all of that.”
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Stotts noted that there is a “disconnect between a peaceful, meaningful protest that keeps George Floyd’s name in everybody’s mind and the reason that we’re all talking about this, destruction of a community, its brick and mortars, its businesses, that will be the disconnect that will have me confused for days.”