“Keep your head down and do the work. The work speaks for itself.”
This is something that has been deeply ingrained in us. I remember my grandmother and uncle operating under this maxim for years as they struggled to build a business that would provide stability for their family for the next 3 generations. I know that they learned this lesson from their mother who ran a restaurant out of her home to make ends meet and take care of her 5 children after her husband passed away at the age of 48.
Another lesson learned from my grandmother is to be humble. Listen to people, and when you make a mistake, make it right. Working in this business is both deeply gratifying and – at times – frustrating. It’s not only the nature of the service industry, but also the nature of life. We all have bad days, and all we can do is wake up the next day and try and be better. As a business, sometimes we make mistakes, and those mistakes can make someone’s bad day worse. We’re sorry when that happens. We try to make it right. 99 times out of 100 those we have wronged are gracious enough to accept our amends.
Recently someone put significant energy into circulating a review across mulitple platforms recounting a negative experience. This review presents a version of events that are different than what we experienced. So, we are writing this here, where we have total control of our content, and we will be sharing it with them directly as well. We have no further comment to add to this statement moving forward, regardless of any response this statement may generate.
To the aggrieved party who has worked relatively hard to defame our family this past week:
Yes, you were charged $13 dollars for 3 shrimp. The cost/quantity are stated plainly on our menu. We understand how frustrating it is for things to be so expensive. Those shrimps cost us $2 a piece and at standard operating practices, we should be charging 3x our cost. We know that’s utterly insane and are trying to meet our public in the middle, even though that middle is still a little insane.
We are truly sorry that we forgot your salad and would have happily made a new one at no cost. You probably would have gotten a free dessert for your trouble as well. In fact, we admit that we occasionally miss items that should have been packed up for a to go. We are working on improving our system so that this does not happen, but in the meantime, we encourage customers to doublecheck our work when coming to pick up their order.
When people are unhappy with a dish, we like to lay eyes on it so we can see what is wrong. We offered you a refund. We asked you to bring the food back because you paid cash and since you would have had to come back anyway it would have given us an opportunity to assess what you described as “little shrimp.”
Yes, we hung up on you. We will not tolerate verbal abuse which includes things like being shouted at and called a “stupid fuck.”
Yes, we hung up on you a 2nd time when you called back and threatened to embarrass us in front of our other guests. It should be noted that before doing so we invited you to come and discuss the situation.
We’re sorry we didn’t reach out after cooler heads could prevail and apologize for the lost salad. We should have done so. However, we are not interested in repairing a relationship with you at this time. Not only are you misrepresenting this situation as it happened you are spending a significant amount of energy to boost your signal which is something that we do take very personally. If you want to stop in we will be happy to cut you a check for a full refund for your experience. After that, our business is concluded; we ask that you please never darken our door again.
Thank you,
Chef Vicki, Duane, Michael, Heather, Dominic, June, Brandon, Lauren, Bayley, Lincoln, Ashton, Matteo, Tony
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