They’re hacked.
Big Apple restaurateurs are fed up with legitimate social media influencers and their lemming-style followers wreaking havoc on fragile financials with ridiculous requests to show off menus. Some cheered last week as Waffle House within the Atlanta area battled a phenomenon where users compete to create essentially the most outrageous off-menu items conceivable.
“I can not exit of my option to grant some crazy request, especially when it doesn’t even make sense. It isn’t in our DNA,” Carnegie Diner owner Stathis Antonakopoulos complained to The Post.
“Nobody will eat 10 pancakes and 10 pieces of fried chicken on top of one another.”
Antonakopoulos saw customers at his favorite West 57th St. they fight to make their option to Moscow Mule milkshakes and fancy lobster entrees in an try and create content. Earlier this yr, an influencer requested a 5-pound burger — things apparently went unsuitable when the request was denied.
“[They] threatened to provide us a nasty review for not accepting customers,” said the distressed restaurateur. “They would not take no for a solution.”
Unsolicited requests come on the heels of the customization frenzy that’s gripping the fast food industry, with chains nationwide scrambling to strike a balance between the free publicity a viral post can bring and the actual work and expense involved in fulfilling the customarily ridiculous requests.
For instance, Chipotle employees have rioted greater than once, most recently after breaking right into a Philly cheese quesadilla crowded places across the country before the chain capitulated and put it on the menu.
A preferred destination for blockbuster content creators, Starbucks collapsed in 2017 and added the favored “secret item,” Pink Drink – a refreshing acai drink made with coconut milk and various berry substitutes – to its each day menu. Restaurants say it doesn’t help when a well-liked brand like Chick-fil-A encourages diners to do their best, as they did last summer by posting a menu of approved hacks.
It’s attending to the purpose where regular customers, let alone TikTok viewers, begin to think that restaurant menus at overseas outlets are only suggestions, laments Zazzy’s Pizza owner Richie Romero.
He blames the TikTok mentality for the ridiculous questions he receives in his exclusive Manhattan franchise.
“People think we’re a range store and we’re moving into without situational awareness,” Romero told The Post. “They’ll ask for Jamaican beef patties you’ll be able to get on the dollar chip shop, they’ll ask for full Italian entrees, and worst of all, they’ll ask for Hawaiian pizza with pineapple – which we might never do.”
Nonetheless, not everyone in New York takes custom orders frivolously.
Brooklyn deli owner Rahim Mohamed has achieved a level of social media stardom by fulfilling the craziest customization requests conceivable – from rubbery worms in egg, bacon and cheese to sushi-filled chicken chops hero – at Red Hook Food Corp.
“A minimum of 90% of my business now comes from TikTok,” Mohamed told The Post. “The difference has been amazing since we began fulfilling custom orders in 2019. Now people will visit us from all around the world, for instance from London, Spain, Australia and the Middle East, because they saw us on TikTok.”