Half-price meals offered at CA cafe if you trash your mask. Yelp reviews take beating
A California cafe’s hot-button discount for customers who throw away their face masks has sparked backlash and negative reviews for the restaurant.
A TikTok video shows a flyer posted on the window of Fiddleheads Cafe in Mendocino, reading: “Throw your mask(s) in our trash bin and receive 50% off your order.”
The video, which was posted last week, has amassed at least 40,000 likes on the platform and received at least 1,700 comments.
Criticism of the sign has also extended to the cafe’s Yelp ratings, with a flood of negative reviews for the restaurant leading Yelp to flag it for “Unusual Activity Alert.” The warning is used for businesses that receive an influx of negative reviews due to news or social media.
“Another business decides to flout CDC guidelines, ignore science, increase the likelihood of customers and employees to get sick and make it harder on the state and country to reopen,” one reviewer wrote.
Fiddleheads Cafe owner Chris Castleman told SFGate that the reception to the discount has been 50-50, “you either love it or you hate it.”
“It’s very alarming how people have gotten all up in arms about this sign — the sign isn’t breaking any law or any ordinances,” Castleman said. “If people are upset with it, they don’t have to come here. … My point is, if you don’t like me, that’s fine. I respect that opinion of yours, and you can go anywhere else in this county right now to eat and pretend that you’re in a safe environment.”
According to the state’s California for All website, “every Californian must wear a mask or face covering in all public and workplace settings where there is a high risk of exposure. This is more important than ever with new, more easily transmitted variants of COVID-19 on the rise.”
Mendocino County is in the state’s red tier of COVID-19 protocol, which allows restaurants to “have indoor activities with a max of 100 people or 25% capacity, whichever is fewer.”
Ted Williams, 5th District Supervisor of Mendocino County, told the publication that “there’s nothing illegal about him giving a discount to people who throw masks away” but if it’s the “mask that they’re wearing, that seems to go against the health order and just common sense and caring for neighboring businesses and residents.”
“My only comment is, imagine the good that you could do with all this energy he has. I’ve equated it to giving discounts to people who don’t wash their hands when they use the restroom.”
John Burkes, Mendocino County’s Code Enforcement Supervisor, told Redheaded Blackbelt that the county has gotten complaints about the restaurant’s promotion and is “investigating as we speak.”
Mendocino is about 150 miles north of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Castleman temporarily closed the restaurant in June rather than comply with the county’s health orders and require his employees to wear face masks, The North Bay Business Journal reported. Castleman received a $10,000 citation and said he would comply with health orders but “continued to flout mask and social distancing requirements,” according to the publication.
“I’m not going to tell my employees to do anything,” said Castleman, according to the outlet. “That’s between them and the county. In general, the stance I have on all this is it’s about personal responsibility and personal choice. It’s not about me being a police officer.”
There are more than 30 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. as of April 6 and more than 3.6 million in California, according to Johns Hopkins University.
