The father and son behind one of the Big Apple’s hottest pizza shops – Prince Street Pizza – resign after being accused of making racist slurs, mocking the Black Lives Matter movement, and telling disgruntled customers to “to put in a hat,” reported 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, will not interact with customers, and will not be involved in management, Eater reported .
The fall out of favor after food blogger Joe Rosenthal began posting screenshots of the vicious comments on his Instagram on Dec. 24 – causing people to flood the company’s Yelp page with negative reviews, the outlet reported.
In the first incident in September 2017, Frank responded to a bad Yelp review by calling the customer “a mongrel,” a “mutt,” and a “yellow dog” – a term considered racist against Asian people.
When Frank announced his decision to step down with his son on Friday, he partially defended the comments to Eater – saying the customer was kicked out by security for being “drunk” and acting “violently” towards customers and employees, reported the outlet.
Frank also said the customer had commented on the owner’s Italian heritage in “demeaning terms”, but agreed that he “should never have commented”.
In later comments, the pizzeria cursed customers who accused the owners of being racist.
When two black women posted negative reviews in separate incidents in August and December 2019 claiming they had been discriminated against by Prince Street Pizza, Frank fired back with a series of curse-laden attacks.
In the first incident, Frank called the customer “ a piece of sh-t ” and wrote “ go ahead, your disgusting race card with c-t, ” Eater reported, citing screenshots.
In the second incident, Frank wrote, “I have all kinds of racial religion and sexual orientation that come into my shop. Now go with a hat, racist clown. ”
Frank later told another customer that he ‘had to wear a hat’ after they left a review complaining that a white man was given a free bottle of water, but when the man, who was Asian, asked for the same thing, he was told. told he had to pay.
In other reviews, Frank threatened customers with violence – calling one a “punk hillbilly” and a “communist bastard,” the outlet reported.
“I guarantee this old ass will break your f-king jaw in one fell swoop,” Frank wrote to the customer, the outlet reported, citing screenshots.
Rosenthal also dug up a since-deleted 2016 Facebook post that Dominic made, which made fun of Black Lives Matter protesters hit by cars during protests. When confronted with it, the son shared a meme in which he said, ‘Did you find it offensive? I thought it was funny. ”
Prince Street Pizza released a two-page statement about the comments; they promised to do better.
“We care deeply about our customers’ feedback and take it very seriously when a customer has a negative experience in one of our stores,” the statement said.
“Our past actions to address negative customer issues have failed and were extremely inappropriate.
“What we said and how we behaved was wrong then, wrong today and will always be wrong. We sincerely apologize and empathize for the pain we have caused in these incidents and apologize to all of our Prince Street Pizza customers, ”the statement said.
“We believe that good food brings people together and that is our goal, bringing people together.
“We hope we can remain good stewards of the communities we serve, and we are committed to our business to ensure that.
“We hope our customers will forgive us and give us the opportunity to serve them as we are grateful for the opportunity to do better. Our customers deserve better. ”