True Kitchen & Kocktails restaurant in Dallas is trending on social media for all of the wrong reasons.
A video has gone viral of the owner scolding his patrons a la Uncle Clifford at The Pynk after some of the women in the establishment were twerking to the tunes played by the DJ.
The owner told his customers:
I invested a lot of money into buying this building and into developing this concept so black people can have somewhere nice to go to, okay?! Somewhere where we can feel good about ourselves as a culture, okay?! Real talk. So all this twerking and sh*t take it to Prime, take it to Pink…don’t bring it here because we’re a restaurant here.
And so beyond that, 75 percent of my customers are ladies and I want men to show respect for themselves for how they carry themselves here. So, how can I tell the men to respect themselves and you guys are twerking on glasses?!
If you want to do it, get the f**k out my restaurant! Because I did it for our people and I did it for our culture. So, don’t do it again. If you don’t like it get out because I don’t need your money. I need to provide something for our people.
Don’t do it again! Thank you!
Watch the clip below:
In a Facebook comment, Kevin Kelly further elaborated on the incident at True Kitchen & Kocktails and addressed his approach when speaking to customers.
They restaurant also posted this statement along with video on Instagram:
In response to the numerous comments and postings on social media I will share a bit of detail associated with our guests twerking, being asked to stop, being addressed, and asked to leave TRUE Kitchen + Kocktails. While I would like to apologize to the patrons who I offended by my poor choice of wording, I think this full story and a bit of video may help your understanding of the final straw with guests addressed and asked to leave.
When the first incidents occurred the guests were politely asked to stop and have respect for themselves and other customers. The guests at issue were at three (3) tables. As this video shows you will see guests spoken to politely and literally begged to stop standing on our furniture and twerking. There are other videos that show much more of the behavior in the following videos but we do not want to embarrass the guests sitting at those tables.
Later, as another video shows, a customer stood on her seat, placed her hands against the glass windows and began to twerk. My immediate reaction was this woman could fall through this window and we could be the target of a lawsuit if she is injured. My second reaction was enough is enough. After already addressing this behavior twice, these customers no longer deserved the courtesy of kindness I expressed in the earlier encounters as it was met with disrespect and intentionally ignored. This is why they were told to leave.
We hope these additional videos will give you a bit more insight into what led to the guests being admonished but we understand we cannot please everyone. As usual, 97% of our guests yesterday were fantastic, this is an indictment on the very few who don’t respect our restaurant. However, we reserve the right to address guests who we believe fall below the standards of the concept created. TRUE Kitchen + Kocktails is a concept created with many months of planning and much more to ensure it is a concept Dallas will love. To date our plan has worked well and we are thankful for our guests.
Peep the reactions on Twitter:
I’ve been in a restaurant before where a few patrons got real turnt and it came across as extremely inappropriate for the setting, but had the owner came out and talked to me like a drunk daddy who is mad cause I ate the big piece of chicken… I would have shown myself out.
What are your thoughts on this?
