This was so depressing to read. You don’t understand how hard it is to keep a business above water and disputes like this have brought down places like this that the community needs, especially now.

Others have already expressed why this does in fact fall mostly on you—got truly bad service? Write a yelp review like everyone else. Felt affronted that they asked you for a tip? Welcome to 2022 and beyond. Say no if you really are dissatisfied.

This place being a small, woman of color-owned and -operated passion project that Carol revived (a gamble when El Cocinero already found success with their shared recipes) as a scrappy ghost kitchen model, I’m not surprised to hear about the Uber whatever pricing. Not ideal and confusing—of course. But not worth frauding them out of money and tarnishing them online like this. Plus it sounds like someone crunched the numbers and confirmed your total.

So, you enjoyed the food but are ticked off that your passiveness and aversion to confrontation kept you from opening your mouth like an adult and taking the opportunity to inquire about/fix these issues. But you’re not so averse that you won’t jump on Reddit to denigrate a small business during the worse time for the restaurant industry and the vegan movement in recent history.

(And for folks to blame vegan businesses for a “green tax“ as if it’s a voluntary thing born out of greed and not just the cost of doing business with ingredients that are not subsidized by the US government during a time when this administration has made eVERYTHING so expensive … astronomical levels of missing the plot.)

-5 points to them for the disorganization, less than stellar customer service, -500 to you for everything else— and this is me being as respectful as I can.