Cafe owners who were slammed online after a customer was charged to have his muffin warmed up have claimed the $1 fee was a mistake.
The controversy was sparked when customer Peter Williams posted a review of the Leaf and Vine cafe, in Melbourne’s east, criticising the business for applying the charge to his bill.
The review went viral and led to a flurry of nasty messages being sent to the cafe’s owners Bec and Pete Murray.
They’ve hit back at the claims made by the customer and said an employee training as a cashier made a simple mistake.
Both owners owned up to the mistake but claimed Mr Williams never reached out to try to rectify the situation.
Owners of East Melbourne cafe Leaf and Vine, Bec and Pete Murray (pictured), have hit back at claims they charge $1 to warm up muffins
Mr Williams said in the review that he only noticed the extra $1 charge on his receipt after leaving the cafe.
‘[It] just left a real bitter taste in my mouth,’ he told his followers on Facebook, adding that he ‘wasn’t in a space or position to argue for it’.
The Murrays, who have owned the cafe for more than a decade, instead chalked the $1 charge to a rookie cashier and a register with too many options.
‘It was a mistake made by someone who was in training,’ Mrs Murray told A Current Affair.
She assured customers that they ‘don’t charge to heat up a muffin’.
‘We never will and we never have,’ she said,
They also took their portion of the blame, saying there is ‘at least 2,000 options on the register’ that add or deduct different costs.
‘Those 2,000 items don’t always work to plan, in this instance this one had a surcharge attached to it but it shouldn’t have,’ Mrs Murray said.
A customer posted a review of the cafe claiming he was charged to have a warmer muffin (pictured), as well as a picture of his receipt
The cafe owners have instead claimed they never have nor will ever charge to warm up muffins and that a rookie cashier confused by the over 2,000 options on the register was to blame
They claimed that Mr Williams would have had his ‘whole bill’ refunded if he’d returned to the cafe and showed them the surcharge.
Mrs Murray added that she was disappointed in Mr Williams not getting back to her when she messaged him to clear the air.
‘He took six hours to reply to me after watching the plethora of a snow storm of comments on social media damning us,’ she said.
Mr Williams’ video received more than 870 comments and more than 1,000 reactions before he deleted it.
The cafe offered free muffins on Tuesday to help quell the rage on social media.
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