Montreal restaurant gives away hundreds of dollars in treasure hunt

Walking around downtown Montreal, if you see a folded white piece of paper sticking out from underneath a bench, don't be too quick to brush it off.

There may be $200 inside.

"It's fun. It's exciting, and it gets everybody involved," explains Alto restaurant owner Mathew Fronimadis.

The $200 "find it, keep it" giveaway is one of many games Fronimadis and his brother, Dave, play with their followers on the Alto Instagram page.

"We hid $200 cash and posted a location hint on our story," one of the posts states.

Fronimadis says the idea came to them a few months ago, simply as a way to have fun and give back to their community.

"It keeps that positive flow of we're not just a pizzeria," he tells CTV News. "We're actually doing something else and bringing people together."

The two brothers bought the greasy spoon, which has been open since 1987, from its original owners a few years ago.

They now run it as a family business.

"The [original] Alto restaurant caught on fire in 2016. When they reopened, they looked for a partner and that's when me and my brother came along," said Fronimadis. "We opened with them. They took their retirement not too long ago, pre-COVID. Since then, my brother and my father, my mother, my wife, the whole family got in."

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by ALTO LIVRAISON TARD dans la NUIT!! (@alto_restaurant)

If you follow Alto on social media, you may already know that they don't take themselves too seriously.

From memes to TikToks and pulling pranks, working at Alto seems like nothing but a good time.

"We're successful, so it's like, you want to give something in return, and I think it just works well," Fronimadis tells CTV News, adding the restaurant also does a lot of work in the community as part of an ongoing effort to give back.

He will admit one thing, though: Fronimadis says he doesn't keep track of how much money the restaurant gives away.

"My father would probably kill me right now," he laughed. "It's very dangerous... I ignore that. People enjoy it, it's positive."

A former customer-turned-owner of the restaurant, Fronimadis says he loves his job -- no matter how cliché that may sound.

"We've got a lot of customers coming in excited, 'When are you guys doing the games? We want to join these challenges,'" he said. "The community is growing; our following is growing. We're very hands-on with our business. We just love what we do."