The owners of the Toronto bakery Courage Cookies say they've received multiple threats after calling out people who donated to the Adamson BBQ GoFundMe.
Threats to damage Courage Cookies' property or worse led Chelsea Hearty and Ian Moores, who started the company at the beginning of lockdown, to file a statement with the police over the weekend.
Courage Cookies, whose business model revolves around donating a percentage of their overall revenue to charities across Toronto, has received both an outpouring of support and vitriol following a post made on its Instagram stories Friday.
The post urged anybody who gave money to the Adamson BBQ fundraiser to come forward with their donation receipt, offering to match that amount with a donation to a food bank instead.
"Show us proof that you donated (which you probably can't because most of you donated anonymously) and we will throw our special BBQ cookie in your face and match your $ donation," wrote Hearty and Moores.
"But instead of bailing out a loser we will donate it to a food bank."
The initiative lasted for 24 hours, the same duration as Courage Cookies' Instagram story.
Nobody came forward with their donation receipts during that time, say Hearty and Moores, but they did get a number of violent responses — to the point where the pair are no longer answering phone calls for fear of anonymous threats.
"[The post] did stem from a bit of anger, we will admit that" said Moores. "We just dont condone anti-mask behaviour."
"We dont condone the behaviour of people at Adamson's BBQ... The frustration stems from what could have been done with [the] close to $300,000 to actually help the community rather than to bail out this anti-masker."
Hearty and Moores, neither of whom have professional baking experience, both lost their jobs during the onset of COVID and started Courage Cookies out of their home kitchen.
Their cookies rapidly gained popularity and within a few months, the pair had opened a commercial kitchen, moved into Stackt Market, and have since donated more than $27,000 to organizations like Team I Will and the Black Legal Action Centre.
In October, the company managed to raise $12,000 in 24 hours for a member of Rethink Breast Cancer, a resource centre for young women suffering from breast cancer.
Courage Cookies also runs holiday meal food drives, and will be partnering with Sick Kids for the hospital's Milk & Cookies campaign for December.
"The more money we can get, the more money we can give," said Moores.
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