Restaurant manager shows up at customer's house after leaving 3-star Yelp review
This restaurant took it way too far after someone left a mediocre review.
Yesha Callahan had a rough experience after eating from La Porchetta, a restaurant in Sterling, Virginia. She ordered a burger, fries, and zeppoles for delivery to her apartment.
"The delivery guy was quite friendly and asked if I could leave a review on Yelp," she wrote in the Root, "I said sure, and he went on his merry way."
But she was disappointed when she opened the styrofoam box and found "sorry-looking steak fries" and a burger without any lettuce or tomatoes.
So, she left a 3-star review on Yelp. The review wasn't particularly harsh, considering her zeppoles didn't even come with powdered sugar. She even suggested sending them in small paper bags so they'd be less soggy.
"Maybe next time I'll try the pizza," her review said.
That night, Callahan experienced what sounds like the premise of a summer horror flick. At around 10 p.m., as she was drifting off to sleep, she heard someone knocking at her door. Then her phone started ringing with a number she didn't recognize.
The mystery caller left this creepy voicemail:
“Hello, this is [inaudible name], the manager of La Porchetta. I am outside your door. I want to speak to you about your Yelp review.”
"I still did not leave my room. I did not want to get ax murdered," Callahan wrote.
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She tweeted at her local Northern Virginia Yelp chapter and called the police. The officer who responded to her call had an equally WTF reaction -- after all, this was only a three star Yelp review.
Callahan also updated her Yelp review, downgrading it to 1-star and writing:
"I originally gave this place a 3 start review. But now it's being reduced to 1 star because the manager showed up at my house on a Sunday night at 10 pm., because he obviously wasn't pleased with the review & wanted to talk. Not only that, he repeatedly called my phone, to let me know he was standing outside my door. WTF! I do not answer my door late at night for anyone. How dare you show up at my house! What kind of business are you running. And yes, the police have been notified. I also wouldn't be surprised if all of these positive reviews were done by friends, associates since it seems as though many of the reviews were done by people with 1 or 2 reviews on their profiles. Next time, don't ask for a review, if you don't want the truth."
La Porchetta "apologized for any inconvenient[sic]" and replied, "It is clearly misJudgement from our manager to go to your house at 10pm."
The restaurant said that GrubHub's description of their burger was incorrect, and claimed that the manager showed up to Callahan's house to give her a replacement for her order. But the damage was already done -- who wouldn't be kind of traumatized by a strange man knocking on their door at night and demanding to speak?
Yelp apologized for La Porchetta's actions and confirmed that their delivery partner would terminate the restaurant's contract for "violation of their terms of service."
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As of Friday, La Porchetta's Yelp page is still active. One recent review, left by someone named Juan P., complained that the restaurant's pizza tasted like sawdust. There's no mention of La Porchetta's manager showing up at Juan's door, though, so maybe they learned a lesson.
UPDATE: April 27, 2018, 4:56 p.m. PDT La Porchetta issued Mashable the following statement via email when asked for additional information of the incident. While it likely wasn't the best approach, it does appear to be an incident of attempted customer service gone wrong.
The incident started when we received an online order Via Grubhub ( an online ordering company) we delivered the food and received 3 stars Yelp review, manager looked at the comments and saw it says no lettuce or tomatoes. Grubhub had the wrong description. The manager misjudged the situation and took a replacement order and wanted to apologize for Grubhub mistake( which we do have documentation of them admitting it’s their fault) and explain to her what happened. She did not answer her for or phone so the manager left a very polite voice message.
And all what he was trying to do for a just started business is to build clientele.
We have been hit so bad on all social media and Yelp going from 5 stars Restaurant to 1-2 stars.
Only for an order worth $15. All of that happen.
We admit that the manager misjudged the situation and should not have gone to the customer. But he was going to give a replacement order and apologize and that’s about it.
