Small Businesses (Restaurants) Can Equal Bad Business
Small businesses/restaurants can equal bad business. This is because
there is no larger corporation to keep either their food or customer service in
check. This allows owners and their workers to do whatever they like to people
and there is nothing that people can do but share their experiences on the web.
For Colorado, Aurora got recent attention in recent years for what StevO’s Pizza and Ribs did to a web influencer, Raina Huang. One of her areas of focus is taking on food challenges and this place would not let her do it and then the owner yelled at her while calling her horrible names. Many times it is these influencers that are attacked by small business.
You can watch the news coverage of it on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGSL4S5j3K8
https://www.asian-dawn.com/2021/06/02/competitive-eater-cursed-and-kicked-out-of-colorado-pizza-restaurant/ (This one has her whole reaction video link in the article).
If you look at reviews of this place they have a long history of doing this to people that goes back years before this most recent viral event. The problem is that this business has no one to stop them. If the owner treated anyone like this at a normal business they would be fired for bad behavior.
Because she had international followers her experience went global. This gave Aurora a bad name for food and how we treat people who visit us. What one small business does could end up having an impact on tourism to the city. I know that even I reached out to the mayor of Aurora about the actions of this place. Sadly, they are still in business even though they did this.
This is an example of how tourism can be impacted by bad behavior:
I myself just this past weekend also had a bad experience with a small business treating me horribly and getting away with it. I am Google local guide and share my experiences with the greater public so they can learn about both the good and the bad a place can offer. I leave detailed reviews of these experiences. To me it doesn't matter if a business is big or small, but what does matter is a person's experience there. At the same time, you do have to take into account that small businesses represent the people that run them and people can be good or bad which reflects in how they do business since there is no one to keep them in check. I normally like trying these smaller places and eating culturally different foods. If a place is great they will not only get repeat business from me, but I share that experience in the hope that others will try them. At the same time, I share my bad experiences in the hopes to keep others from suffering what I suffered through.
My experience this weekend was with Pho King Rapidos. Each year my family celebrates lunar new year and we go around to all the different events. I even share all of these events on my Culture in Colorado blog so that others may get a chance to experience lunar new year if they have never gotten the chance. I had scoped out Jade Mountain Brewery (the place where the event was held) the weekend before. To help support both the event and a small business I had not only brought people indirectly to the event by posting it on the blog, but I also brought friends with me to celebrate. This year the offerings of where to celebrate were very limited with many of the normal venues not doing anything due to covid. This is one of the things that both Jade Mountain and Pho King Rapidos did not take into account. Since there were not many options to celebrate the new year people were going to flock to the ones that were offering celebrations. This showed no research on the part of the business owners and it ended up having them being unprepared to handle the crowds they received. There was also issues with my food as well. Here what I put up as my google review for Pho King Rapidos:
1/29/22- I got to try this food truck at the Jade Mountain lunar new year event today. For a place with the word rapidos (fast) in its name this was one of the slowest food truck experiences I have ever had. I had to wait in line for over half an hour and then it took another half an hour to get the food. They just couldn't handle the amount of people that were at the event. Then there are the food issues. Both my mom and I ordered their jackfruit sandwich. She had gotten hers first and ended up finishing hers. Then I got mine. Even though they were supposed to be the same sandwich, mine was super spicy in comparison. This food truck cannot produce a consistent product. Then their food is also overpriced for what you get. The only reason why I gave them 2 stars instead of one is because the seasoning on their fries was good.
Then here is a pic of part of their response to me (I can’t access their full response to me any more):
They choose to even ignore my recent reviews and just picked a random (Panda Express) to criticize me for. They didn’t really look at my reviews because I easily found many where I had given small businesses good scores and major business (like Lowes, Star Bucks, KFC….) bad scores. They just wanted to bully me. Part of their response was that I was wrong about my sandwich tasting different then my mom’s because it was from the same batch. My response to them on that was a cooking 101 issue that all cooks should be aware of. If you are making large batches of food you need to make sure that they are fully mixed or it is easy to have one batch taste different depending on the serving because the ingredients did not fully mix. Having consistent food is key. Even someone that just watches the Food Network knows this because people loose completions for not having consistent plating. So if the general population can know this then cooks (who are supposed to be experts in their field) should know this as well. Also people at this event didn’t have other food options so they were forced to wait in the long line for this place. Jade Mountain had shut down their food options to give this food truck a chance to get the business (a mistake they shouldn’t had made and is in part responsible for me dropping my score of them). The owner of Pho King Rapidos can be mean to whoever they want to be because they have no corporation or HR department to fire them for messing up on the job or mistreating people. It’s like how Stevo’s has managed to stay in business even with years of them abusing people.
Here was my updated review of Pho King Rapidos on Google:
1/30/22- Where I gave a critical analysis of my experience with this food truck they decide to personally attack me. I want everyone to read their response to me. Yes I go to a lot of small businesses because I support small businesses and food from other cultures. Where they said they looked at my previous reviews they also choose to ignore me giving small businesses like K+ Hotpot and Tiger Sugar good reviews. Please read my reviews and you will see that my ratings come from my experiences with each business and most of my reviews are detailed so readers can see why I gave each place the score I did. This place is just upset that their business gave me a bad experience and I shared it. At the same time I want people to be aware of if small businesses are good or bad businesses. I have worked catering events of over 1000 and know what it takes to give good customer service in the food industry even when you have large crowds. Please pay attention at how this place attacked a customer that shared a bad experience. If a place doesn't want customers sharing bad experiences then the business shouldn't create the bad experience. You never know which customer will take something public so all customer experiences should be thought of in this way. They do not care about their service or how they treat people. You can see this in their attack of me. Also if you check Dave's review he also points out how they insult people. It's not just me these people have mistreated. They are repeat offenders. Please do not give them any business because of not only their bad service, but because they attack people that share their bad experiences. I'm also taking my 2 star review down to 1 star because of how they attack their customers, negative stars would be more suited to the situation because they took a bad experience and made it worse.
I am not the only one that this business as insulted:
This review also shows that the issues with both their food and production issues (what causes the long lines mostly due to not being able to handle an event of any real size):
The issues I had with them are the same that they have experienced in the past and won’t fix. Bad experiences like this can turn people off not only this specific place, but may even impact the view that they have of a culture’s food. This could sour them from being willing to try new foods and maybe even help them to hold some resentment for the culture even if the people from the restaurant/business do not really represent that culture. People hold on to their experiences. Experiences is what makes each of us who we are.
So the overall point of this post is for you not to let any business, big or small, walk all over you or treat you bad. Businesses need to be held accountable to how they treat people and the business they do. Let people know about your experiences.
Read more about the Stevo’s incident:
https://thetakeout.com/youtube-food-challenger-kicked-out-of-restaurant-accus-1847016159
Other videos that cover the experiences of others at Stevo’s:
For more on Raina Huang:
https://twitter.com/omgitzraina?lang=en
https://www.youtube.com/user/RainasKitchen?app=desktop
https://www.rainaiscrazy.com/about.html
Picture 1 from: https://culinasydney.com.au/tips-to-become-successful-in-the-food-business/
Other Pictures: All were screen shots from Google Reviews.
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