How one birthday cake argument turned into a Jersey Shore restaurant’s PR nightmare

☑️An argument over a birthday cake has sparked backlash against a shore restaurant

☑️Joey Tomato's website and social media disappeared following a flood of negativity

☑️The family involved says it hopes everyone learns from it

POINT PLEASANT BEACH — The owners of a Jersey Shore boardwalk pizza restaurant are staying quiet as a firestorm of bad reviews and outrage swirls around them after a confrontation with customers over a birthday cake went viral.

Video shows a worker at Joey Tomato's on the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk screaming at a family that bought a meal and then asked for a knife to cut the birthday cake they had brought with them. The customer says they called ahead and were told it was OK to bring the cake. The employee disagreed.

“OK, so when I come to your house with my candles and my cake, am I going to be able to do whatever I want there now?” the woman said in the video. “You didn’t call, you didn’t make an arrangement or anything. You just don’t walk into a restaurant and do whatever you want. It’s inappropriate. And you owe us an apology. I don’t owe you anything," the woman yelled.

And with that, the restaurant has gone silent as debate broke out about who was right and who was wrong. Its website is inaccessible, and its social media is gone. Its Yelp site has so many bad reviews that a note was placed on it about the video. The owners declined an offer from New Jersey 101.5 to tell their side of the story.

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Viral surprise

Tom Jurkowski, whose family is in the video, posted a response on his Vintage New Jersey site to say he didn't expect it to go viral and hopes everyone learns from it.

"We spent money at this place; we just wanted to borrow a knife to cut the cake and the response completely caught us off guard," Jurkowski said.I don't want to keep reliving this story or keep contributing to affecting people's livelihoods.

Jurkowski also said he has turned down media interview requests.

Birthday celebrations should be welcomed

Spiro Hadjiyerou, the owner of the Colonial Diner in East Brunswick, was surprised by the woman's response and said that as long as the celebrants buy food, birthday parties are a positive part of his business.

"It's part of our business that these people came. They're our customers. They came in to celebrate, and if they're not our customers, we want to make them our customers," Hadjiyerou told New Jersey 101.5.

He suspects that something set the woman off that's not in the video. But the situation is salvageable.

"I would reach out to the people and just offer them a free beer and come back and I'll get you a specialty cake," Hadjiyerou said. "We chose this field for a reason, and our customers come and celebrate.  For us it's a bonus because they chose our place to celebrate."

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