A South Carolina restaurant owner has been grilled over his response to a couple who complained about their pork chops.
Numerous TikTok videos depict Christopher Philip Wallman Jr., the proprietor of ‘The Grill’, alleging that the couple is declining to settle the full bill.
‘I want everybody to hear this now,’ Wallman Jr. announced to the entire restaurant of uncomfortable customers.
‘In the 35 minutes they’ve been here, this delightful couple has ordered $137 worth of food, and now they’re refusing to pay,’ he stated in a video that has garnered over 12 million views.
The husband interjected, mentioning that his wife found her pork chops to be ‘overcooked’, while the wife promptly asserted that they were ready to pay the bill as long as the subpar pork chops were removed from the total.
‘My husband is a disabled veteran, he works a job as well, we’ve got plenty of money. We’re not refusing to pay. We said we are refusing to pay for the pork chops we never got,’ she yelled out to the other diners.
Wallman Jr. did not take kindly to this, telling the couple that ‘I will not be bullied in my own restaurant’ before telling them to ‘walk out the door and don’t ever come in this restaurant again.’
The viral videos have sparked a mountainous backlash, with many on social media accusing Wallman Jr. of being racist and advocating a boycott of his restaurant.
Others went so far as to leave the business’s name, address and phone number all over TikTok and Instagram.
The restaurant’s Yelp page was flooded with so many negative reviews accusing the owner of racism to the couple who are bi-racial, alleging that was a factor in his response. The criticism got so bad that Yelp had to step in.
‘This business recently received increased public attention resulting in an influx of people posting their views to this page, so we have temporarily disabled the ability to post here as we work to investigate the content,’ read a public attention alert from Yelp.
‘While racism has no place on Yelp and we unequivocally reject racism or discrimination in any form, all reviews on Yelp must reflect an actual first-hand consumer experience (even if that means disabling the ability for users to express points of view we might agree with).’
In the clip, an argument persisted as it became clear both sides weren’t going to let this go.
The husband, in a calmer tone than his wife, reminded the owner that they hadn’t got the pork chops after his wife sent them back.
‘The pork chops, we never received,’ he said. ‘Just like anything else you don’t receive, you wouldn’t pay for it, right?’
The back-and-forth continued for some time until Wallman Jr. agreed to take the pork chops off, reducing the bill to $122.92. He then handed the check to the husband, who paid it without issue.
Wallman Jr. has directly addressed the situation twice on his Facebook page, first offering an apology on April 12. He also explained that this ‘misunderstanding’ happened roughly six months ago, when his restaurant first opened.
‘There is a video circulating again from when we first opened. I have said before. And I’ll say again for everyone new – I apologize for reacting to that couple the way I did,’ he said.
‘There are several circumstances that occur before she started filming that ya’ll don’t see and that doesn’t excuse my reaction at all but that does explain why it happened. It has nothing to do with race, color, creed, religion, nothing.
‘To add – they were dissatisfied, doesn’t really matter why but it wasn’t handled correctly.’
Wallman Jr. made another post two days later on April 14, appearing to condemn people for allegedly harassing diners at a similarly named restaurant in Virginia. It’s called the Mill Street Grill and is a six-hour drive away from his restaurant in South Carolina.
Ron Bishop, co-owner of the Mill Street Grill, told WHSV that this is a case of ‘mistaken identity.’
‘We are being associated with something that has nothing to do with us,’ Bishop said.
‘We are inclusive, we welcome everyone, and we don’t want to be associated with the negativity coming from another Mill Street Grill.’
Without mentioning the Mill Street Grill by name, Wallman Jr. claimed that people were ‘calling a place that has zero connection to me and screaming obscenities in front of little girls.’
There’s no evidence that anyone has gone to the Virginia restaurant to disrupt customers, but Bishop did confirm he was receiving calls and getting bad reviews.
‘We’ve received phone calls where people hang up or leave bad reviews based on something we had no part in,’ Bishop said. ‘We just want our community and others to know that we are not the restaurant in that video.’
