Broken glass needed to be picked up in front of the Starbucks at John and Queen streets in Toronto. (Showwei Chu/CBC)

By Amber Hildebrandt, CBC News


Benny Banipal says he wasn't worried about keeping his store open on Queen Street West over the G20 weekend.

Owner of the Second Cup on the southwest corner of Queen and John streets, Banipal says, "I knew they wouldn't touch Canadian companies."

Kitty-corner to the coffee shop is Starbuck's, the Starbucks outlet that appeared in, no doubt, hundreds of TwitPics and "protest tourist" photographs with its smashed windows, which were later boarded up.

"Look at the history of other protests," Banipal shrugs, when asked about the cafes' very separate fates.

Still, Banipal estimates that he lost about $4,000 on the weekend. That includes lost business from Saturday, which had about a quarter of the usual business, plus the extra hours required to keep him and an assistant manager at the store almost day and night.

But at least things were a little brighter on Sunday. As one of the few places open, Second Cup snagged more than its usual Sunday crowd.

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