Q. What made you decide on this concept for your restaurant?
A. The idea came by while I was working at a restaurant a few years ago. I had a hearing impaired guest who used to dine in that restaurant regularly. He was a very nice person. However, he used to order for his food by pointing at pictures and words. I felt that this guest was not getting the experience that he deserved. He was paying the same price as any other guest who dines in that restaurant. I wanted to make it a better experience for him. So, I tried to learn some basic sign language, like ‘How are you?’ ‘Nice to meet you’, ‘Enjoy’, ‘Thank you’ and so on. When the deaf guest came back another day, I tried what I learned on him. He was delighted! He was surprised I could actually sign! This guest immediately brought his friends the next day!  This encounter made me think about how ‘fun’ it would be to have a restaurant staffed with the deaf and make hearing people ‘try’, and use sign language for their food. At that point in time, I felt it was a fun idea. I started to think about this concept more seriously after I completed by MBA at Ryerson University. When the right time came, I was able to launch Signs.

Signs is an upper casual dining restaurant, run by an Indian origin restaurateur that is staffed with hearing impaired servers. It is located in the Yonge and Wellesley intersection in downtown Toronto.

Q. What was the background research that went into ensuring your idea could be implemented?
A. I researched on this concept for nearly a year, by mostly mingling with the hearing impaired community in Toronto. I attended the American Sign Language (ASL) class to learn more about the language. I also interviewed a number of deaf people in order to develop the concept. Two organisations — Bob Rumball’s Centre for the Deaf (BRCD) and Canadian Hearing Society (CHS) greatly assisted me in connecting with potential candidates for my restaurant and with their help I hired a few for testing the proof of concept. I trained a few hearing impaired staff using interpreters on basic restaurant service and also on the process to be followed. Once ready, we invited a few friends for dinner, for which the food was ordered from outside, but served by our hearing impaired servers. The guests’ feedback after the concept testing was fantastic, which ensured that this idea could be implemented.