The father and son behind one of the Big Apple’s most popular pizzerias – Prince Street Pizza – are stepping down after being accused of making racist comments, mocking the Black Lives Matter movement and telling disgruntled customers to “shit” in the hat “reports said 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, have no interactions with customers and will not be involved in management, Eater reported. .
The fall of grace comes after food blogger Joe Rosenthal started posting screenshots of scathing comments on his Instagram on December 24 – causing people to flood the company’s Yelp page with negative reviews, the channel reported.
In the first incident in September 2017, Frank responded to a negative criticism from Yelp by calling the customer “a mongrel”, a “mongrel” and a “yellow dog” – a term considered racist against Asians.
When Frank announced his decision to step down with his son on Friday, he partially defended the comments to Eater – saying the client was expelled by security for being “drunk” and acting “violent” with customers and employees, reported the channel.
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 posted negative reviews in August and December 2019 in separate incidents, claiming they had been discriminated against by Prince Street Pizza, Frank responded with a series of curse-laden attacks.
In the first incident, Frank called the customer “a piece of shit” and wrote “fuck off, you disgusting racing card game playing ct,” Eater reported, citing screenshots.
In the second incident, Frank wrote, “I have all kinds of racial religion and sexual orientation that come to my store. Now go with a hat, you racist clown. ”
Later, Frank told another customer to “sh-t in a hat” after they left a review complaining that a white man received a free bottle of water, but when the man, who was Asian, asked for the same thing, he was instructed to pay.
In other assessments, Frank threatened customers with violence – calling one of them “country punk” and “communist scoundrel”, the vehicle reported.
“I guarantee this old ass is going to break your damn jaw with a punch,” Frank wrote to the customer, the store reported, citing screenshots.
Rosenthal also unearthed a 2016 Facebook post that Dominic made, mocking Black Lives Matter protesters getting hit by cars during the protests. When confronted with this, the son shared a meme saying “Did you find this offensive? I thought it was funny. ”
Prince Street Pizza released a two-page statement on the comments; they promised to do better.
“We care deeply about feedback from our customers and take it very seriously when a customer has a negative experience at one of our stores,” said the statement.
“Our actions in the past to address negative customer concerns have been insufficient and extremely inadequate.
“What we said and how we behaved was wrong at the time, it is wrong today and it will always be wrong. We really apologize and empathize with the pain we cause in these incidents and we 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 to be able to continue to be good managers 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, as we are grateful for the opportunity to do better. Our customers deserve better. ”