A South Carolina restaurant owner is facing intense public backlash after a viral video captured him publicly berating a couple who disputed a menu item—despite ultimately paying their bill in full.
Christopher Phipil Wallman Jr., owner of The Grill in South Carolina, thought his customers, a bi-racial couple, were refusing to pay their $137 tab, and instead of resolving the matter privately, he instead raised his voice hoping to make an example out of them.
Highlights
- A South Carolina restaurant owner publicly shamed a bi-racial couple over a $137 bill.
- The owner's outburst went viral, triggering accusations of racism and a flood of negative reviews that forced Yelp to shut down the restaurant’s page temporarily.
- Internet fury spilled over to an unrelated restaurant with a similar name, leaving innocent staff to fend off harassing calls and online attacks.
“I want everybody to hear this now,” Wallman Jr. declared. “This lovely couple $137 worth of food for the 35 minutes they've been here and they are refusing to pay.”
The husband, remaining calm, explained that they were only objecting to being charged for the pork chops, which had been overcooked and sent back. Despite never receiving a replacement, the item still appeared on their bill.
Restaurant owner’s attempt to publicly shame his customers backfires after incident goes viral
Image credits: ghettogaragebuildz
“Just like anything else you don’t receive, you wouldn’t pay for it, right?” the husband explained, with his wife adding that they were fully prepared to pay the rest of the bill and were not trying to avoid payment.
“We’ve got plenty of money,” she said. “We said we are refusing to pay for the pork chops we never got.”
Image credits: Christopher Philip Wallman Jr./Facebook
Instead of listening to his customers, the owner opted instead to escalate the confrontation, stating that he would “not be bullied in his own restaurant,” and instructing the couple to “walk out the door and don’t ever come to his restaurant again.”
Image credits: ghettogaragebuildz
Eventually—and seeing that his outburst was starting to make the rest of the customers uncomfortable—the owner relented and removed the pork chops from the bill, reducing the total to $122.92.
The couple paid without further incident, putting an end to the situation. But for the restaurant, the problems were only beginning.
Netizens organized a cancellation campaign, flooding review sites with negative customer scores
In the days following the incident going viral online, the owner, Wallman Jr., has faced constant criticism and harassment. Besides people being generally annoyed by his outburst, some have accused him of being racist due to the couple being bi-racial, with the husband being an African American.
Image credits: ghettogaragebuildz
Netizens took to customer review platforms such as Yelp to destroy the restaurant’s reputation, uploading a large number of negative scores, which caused the platform to suspend the option.
“This business recently received increased public attention resulting in an influx of people posting their views to this page,” a Yelp notice read. “We have temporarily disabled the ability to post here as we work to investigate the content.”
Image credits: ghettogaragebuildz
In response to the backlash, Wallman Jr. issued an apology on Facebook. He clarified that the incident took place approximately six months ago, soon after the restaurant first opened. He also explained the situation as a “misunderstanding.”
“I apologize for reacting to that couple the way I did,” he wrote. “There are several circumstances that occurred before she started filming that y’all don’t see. That doesn’t excuse my reaction at all, but it does explain why it happened.”
“It has nothing to do with race.”
Outrage spilled into unrelated restaurants, as netizens mistakenly targeted similarly named establishments
Image credits: ghettogaragebuildz
The internet increased the intensity of the outrage to the point where it began spilling into other, unrelated, businesses.
For instance, some users mistakenly targeted a restaurant with a similar name, destroying its reputation along the way. The Mill Street Grill in Staunton, Virginia started receiving harassing phone calls and got its social media presence flooded with negative reviews.
Image credits: Christopher Philip Wallman Jr./Facebook
“We are being associated with something that has nothing to do with us,” its co-owner, Ron Bishop, told local media. “We are inclusive, we welcome everyone, and we don’t want to be associated with the negativity coming from another restaurant.”
Wallman Jr. addressed the confusion, pleading with people to stop “calling a place that has zero connection to me and screaming obscenities in front of little girls.”
Although the owner insisted that the matter should be left in the past, the public outcry shows no signs of stopping.
What began as a heated disagreement over a lunch bill spiraled into a harassment campaign with racial and political undertones.
"Pure racism." The owner's words fell on deaf ears, as netizens kept accusing him of being racist
