A Calgary pizza maker says he's been driven out of business by an overzealous building inspector.
Dave Kunz is the owner of Pizza Prana which uses a mobile wood-fired oven to make healthy pizza pies.
He was supposed to have his booth operating throughout the Calgary Folk Music Festival but instead it will remain closed.
Kunz operated this same booth at the Stampede earlier this month without any problems.
He claims the building inspector at the Folk Fest was overzealous and that is why his business didn't pass inspection.
Kunz claims that in the end, the inspector cited an unreadable CSA sticker on the oven as a key reason for the closure.
Kunz says he tried to reason with the inspector and even contacted the oven manufacturer but that didn't change the results of his inspection.
He says the loss of income has forced him to shut down for good.
"I resigned myself to the fact I was going to lose a lot of money, that people weren't going to work, that I was going to be stuck with a lot of product, and this dream of opening my new pizza joint was going to die," said Kunz.
The city says the gas and plumbing inspectors who looked at the booth during the Stampede weren't qualified to certify a wood burning stove.
"He was not actually inspected at the Stampede by a building inspector that's why he operated there," said Kevin Griffiths, Calgary Chief Building Official.
Kunz says that in the last five years he has invested almost $100,000 in his mobile pizzeria.
He has now listed most of his assets on kijiji and expects he'll get back about a quarter of that.
