Korean Cafe Owner Apologizes After Angering ATEEZ Fans Due To Rejection Of Birthday Events
A Korean cafe owner recently got into hot soup after angering fans by showing preferential treatment depending on idols’ popularity. In particular, fans of ATEEZ were duly upset when they were rejected from booking the cafe for a member’s birthday event.
Although the cafe originally claimed to accept reservations on a first-come-first-serve basis, the owner showed clear preferential treatment to more famous artists when they blatantly shut down booking requests from “less popular” idols, even when there were no other reservation inquiries. ATEEZ fans began boycotting the cafe for events and sent complaints to the cafe through Twitter.
🗣 to any stans who are or were planning to hold an event at a cafe in korea, make sure NOT to do it at:
– cafe raisin
> NEW!! CAFE YELLOW BIRTHDAY
@/cafeyellowBD pic.twitter.com/zFFlDYx05m— L⁸ ; clara day🦊 (@txtpsh) March 13, 2022
DO NOT EAT IN THE YELLOW CAFE https://t.co/Q8cGqTo4rK pic.twitter.com/xJnoE8nmWh
— hongjoong (@theehomosexuaI) March 13, 2022
The cafe in question, called the Cafe Yellow Birthday, issued an official apology after the matter quickly escalated and went viral among various online communities. In a post captioned, “I’m sorry for hurting your feelings,” the cafe uploaded a long message to the fans.
기분 상하게 해드려 죄송합니다. pic.twitter.com/FsSO6zI1E6
— 홍대 합정 상수 생일카페/카페 옐로우벌스데이 (@cafeyellowBD) March 13, 2022
They first began by explaining that the confusion among the rules stemmed from the fact that they were still in the early opening phases and hadn’t ironed out the set rules yet. They apologized for having put their profit sights ahead of their customers.
Hello. This is Yellow Birthday.
First, we are very sorry for hurting your feelings by picking and choosing the reservations we accept for idols’ events. Seeing as we only opened recently, we were in the midst of creating a set of rules for the usage of our cafe based on the few events that we had experienced. We apologize once again if you felt discomfort because of the rules and information that were circulated.
As we are a business operating for profit, we of course set the standards according to sales, and we had hurt the fans because of it. I was inconsiderate due to my greed. I’m sorry.
— Cafe Yellow Birthday
They explained a few of the complaints, including their requirement of having more than 20 visitors at the event and not providing the option for specially made bottled beverages at events that expect a smaller crowd. They claim these rules were made after having to throw out a large batch of unsold bottles during a past birthday event.
The rule of having 20 visitors was a standard set for our daily sales during the weekend. It was set in order to prevent the daily sales during the event from being lower than our regular sales as the events are held during our operating hours.
As for the limit set on the bottled drinks, we once had an event where a large number of the bottles were unsold. Since we cannot reuse them, we had to throw them out. Because of this issue, we decided to not accept bottle requests for events that appear to suffice with take-out beverages. This standard was set for 50 visitors a day. Also, this is due to the fact that we have a minimum production quantity for bottled drinks per beverage.
— Cafe Yellow Birthday
They concluded by apologizing once more and vowed to do better in the future.
Once more, we apologize to those who were hurt. In the future, we will put in our efforts to put proper operating rules in place. I’m sorry.
— Cafe Yellow Birthday
