The father and son behind one of Big Apple’s most popular pizzerias – Prince Street Pizza – quit after being accused of making racist comments, mocking the Black Lives Matter movement and telling dissatisfied customers to “wear a hat.” . said the reports on Friday.
Frank Morano, who opened the store in 2012, and his son Dominic Morano will continue to own the restaurant, but will no longer be involved in day-to-day operations, interact with customers and be involved in management. Eater.
The downfall comes after food blogger Joe Rosenthal began posting screenshots of vitriol comments on Instagram on December 24 – leading people to flood the company’s Yelp page with negative reviews, the press reported.
In the earliest incident in September 2017, Frank responded to a bad review from Yelp calling the client “a mongrel”, “mutt” and “yellow dog” – a term that is considered racist against Asians.
When Frank announced his decision to resign with his son on Friday, he partially defended the remarks to Eater – saying the client was fired from security because he was “intoxicated” and acted “violently” against clients. and employees, the outlet reported.
Frank also said the client commented on the owner’s Italian heritage in “degrading terms”, but agreed that “he should never have responded”.
In subsequent comments, the pizzeria cursed customers who accused the owners of being racist.
When two black women published negative reviews in August and December 2019 in separate incidents claiming to have been discriminated against by Prince Street Pizza, Frank fired a series of cursed attacks.
In the first incident, Frank called the customer “a piece of sh-t” and wrote “go f – k yourself you disgusting race card playing c – t,” Eater reported, citing screenshots.
In the second incident, Frank wrote, “I have all kinds of race religion and sexual orientation coming into my store. Now go with a hat, racist clown. ”
Frank later told another client to “wear a hat” after leaving a review, complaining to a white man that he had been given a bottle of free water, but when the man, who was Asian, asked for the same, he was told to pay.
In other reviews, Frank threatened customers with violence – calling him a “punk hillbilly” and a “communist scumbag,” the press reported.
“I guarantee this old ass will break your f-king’s jaw in one fist,” Frank wrote to the customer, the outlet reported, citing screenshots.
Rosenthal also unearthed a deleted Facebook post from 2016 by Dominic, who mocked Black Lives Matter protesters who were hit by cars during the protests. When confronted with this, the son shared a meme saying “Did you find it offensive? I found it funny. ”
Prince Street Pizza released a two-page statement about the comments; they promised to do better.
“We care deeply about the feedback of our customers and we take it very seriously when a customer has a negative experience in one of our stores,” the statement said.
“Our past actions in addressing negative customer issues have been short-lived and extremely inadequate.
“What we said and how we behaved was wrong then, it is wrong today and it will always be wrong. We truly apologize and sympathize with the injuries we caused in these incidents and apologize to all our Prince Street Pizza customers, ”the statement said.
“We believe that good food brings people together and this is our goal, to bring people together.
“We hope we can continue to be good administrators of the communities we serve and dedicate our business to ensuring that.
“We hope that our customers will forgive us and give us the opportunity to serve them, because we are grateful for the opportunity to do better. Our customers deserve better. ”