Every night, Ziggy Haile shows up for work at Zesty's, a convenience store on Ottawa's Rideau Street, and takes his place behind the cash register. Around him, some of the city's most vulnerable people drift in and out—people experiencing homelessness, struggling with addiction, looking for warmth, human contact, or both.
Most clerks keep their distance. Ziggy started filming.
From Rideau Street to 1.4 Million Views
Haile began working at Zesty's in August 2021, and what he encountered—the "good, the bad, the ugly, and the permanent ugly," as he described it—moved him to document his interactions on TikTok under the handle @gangsterapu.
The moment that broke through: a video of a customer throwing hot coffee on him, which racked up 1.4 million views. Instead of turning bitter or retreating, Haile recognized the platform he'd been given.
He pivoted. He began filming conversations with his regulars—many homeless, many battling addiction—not to mock or exploit them, but to humanize them for an audience that had never considered their stories.
A Life Shaped by Hardship
Haile's empathy isn't accidental. As a youth in Ottawa, he trained in track and field and basketball, dreaming of a university sports scholarship. A knee injury ended those plans permanently. Adrift, he found himself involved in the drug scene, which led to an arrest and years of struggle before he decided to forge a different path.
By the time he started at Zesty's, he understood from the inside what it meant to feel lost, overlooked, and without support.
"I can't do anything for my grandmother," he said, referring to his family in Tigray, Ethiopia—a region his family fled in 1991 as refugees, and one that had been consumed by civil war since 2020—"but I can do something for these people in front of me."
A Community Responds
Since going viral, Haile has received donations from viewers around the world. People physically show up at Zesty's to drop off basic necessities—food, toiletries, clothing—for the people they've watched in his videos. A man who once worked the overnight shift alone is now the centre of a small, spontaneous community of care.
He's continued to go to work, continued to film, and continued to advocate—even while admitting he'd "gone totally broke" himself and had to borrow money for rent.
Zesty's is just a convenience store on Rideau Street. But for the people Ziggy Haile serves, it's something closer to a lifeline.
Story originally reported by CBC Ottawa.
