Restaurant owner blasts customer after nasty Yelp review

The owner of a Thousand Oaks restaurant is mad as hell at online reviewers and he’s not going to take it anymore.

Or at least that’s the reason he’s giving for refusing to apologize to a woman and her boyfriend whom he targeted in a now-viral Facebook post.

In the post, the owner of Sunset Terrace Restaurant & Bar, who signs it “Tyrone,” calls the woman “ignorant, disgusting, miserable,” and a couple of expletives.

He ends the post by saying, “The world will be a little bit better of place once you no longer a part of it. [sic]”

State alcohol permit records identify the bar’s owner as Tyrone Knox. A request for comment from the business Tuesday went unreturned.

After the post went viral and Sunset Terrace’s Yelp review page was flooded with negative reviews and people criticizing the owner for his response, the apparent owner went on the offensive.

He deleted the original, vulgar post, then said it was supposed to have been a private message and explained why he was so angry. Screen shots of the post have been posted online.

According to his post, the woman’s mother suffers from schizophrenia and was acting unusual inside the restaurant’s bar area. The mother, who was cordial, warned the bartender that her daughter is a difficult customer and was on her way to the restaurant to pick up food.

If it wasn’t ready when she got there, there would be trouble, the mother allegedly cautioned.

By all accounts, it didn’t go well when Brooke showed up.

“Tried calling the manager and he just made excuse after excuse and said my mom was crazy and frantic as if that’s a reason for poor customer service?” the woman wrote on her Yelp page. She didn’t explain what the poor customer service was in the review.

Her review was posted in June but Tyrone only responded to it recently, sparking the renewed interest.

“I apologize to anyone offended by my choice of language,” Tyrone wrote on Monday.

He said that when the woman called to complain after her visit, she and her boyfriend offered to change their review on Yelp if the next time she and her mother showed up, the meal was free.

“I do not apologize to [the woman], her boyfriend … and others like them who use social media like Yelp and Facebook to threaten and blackmail hospitality workers and businesses alike,” Tyrone wrote on the restaurant’s page.

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