A restaurant owner has resigned after receiving death threats following a post she made on an online forum about spiking vegan food.
Laura Goodman, the head chef and co-owner of Carlini restaurant, which has branches in Shifnal and Albrighton, Shropshire, has faced a backlash after making several comments on a Facebook group.
A group of diners had booked a table on Friday evening, and in the early hours of Saturday Goodman posted: “Pious, judgmental vegan (who I spent all day cooking for) has gone to bed, still believing she’s a vegan.”
When asked by another member of the group whether that meant she had done anything to make the meal non-vegan on purpose, she replied: “Actually, I should have said ‘they’re’ not a vegan … not ‘she’s’.”
Elsewhere in the group on a separate post, she wrote: “Spiked a vegan a few hours ago.”
The comments were soon shared across social media, causing outrage among both vegans and non-vegans. The restaurant’s TripAdvisor and Google pages were flooded with negative reviews and its Facebook page was taken down after being overwhelmed with complaints.
Goodman’s co-owner and fiance, Michael Gale, said they had received death threats and threats of lawsuits and that their “world has been turned upside down”.
On Wednesday, the restaurant released a statement and apology. It read: “Laura Goodman has today tendered her resignation from Carlini and the board of directors are currently considering their options. Whilst this process is being completed, Laura will not be working at either of the restaurants, which will reopen later this week. As part of a pre-planned recruitment drive, Carlini is also recruiting for an additional head chef to work across both its restaurants in Shropshire.”
Goodman added: “I am really deeply sorry. There were no meat products added to the dishes.”
Local vegans from the Telford Vegan Action group plan to picket the restaurant on Saturday. Organiser Hope Lye told the Guardian the resignation would not put them off their protest and it was “difficult to see” how Goodman would no longer be involved when the other co-owner was her fiance.
Lye said: “I wouldn’t be confident going to the restaurant even though she says she has resigned. The business was started with her partner so she could still be involved. Her partner has also made excuses for her and tried to divert the blame instead of standing up and saying: ‘We’re so sorry, we made a mistake and it shouldn’t have happened.’ I would have accepted that as more genuine but instead they keep moving positions.”
At the picket, Lye and the other protesters plan to educate local people on the benefits of a vegan lifestyle as well as asking them to boycott the restaurants.
With veganism on the rise, Lye said restaurants would have to become more vegan-friendly. “More businesses are heading that way and adding vegan menus. Restaurants have to change with the times.”
Lye, who has been vegan for 26 years, once ate a meal to which dairy products had accidentally been added by a chef. “I actually had to go to hospital with stomach cramps and violent diarrhoea. [The chef] took full responsibility and apologised. It was a genuine mistake and we went back to the restaurant afterwards.”
Lye added: “[Carlini] have said the food wasn’t spiked with meat but it could have been a dairy product. When we go to restaurants we have to put our trust in the chef and the whole kitchen. It was a vegan this time but it could have been someone with an allergy next time. Just because you have an awkward customer, you don’t do something like that to them. You ask them to leave or put up with it.”
Gale previously defended Goodman by saying that “spiked” was just “poorly chosen” language and that she hadn’t “fully realised the consequence of what it meant”.
A previous statement said that Goodman had spent “a lot of time” designing a special vegan menu for the party only for one of them to order a pizza topped with mozzarella cheese. However, Gale later admitted that some in the party were vegetarian rather than vegan.
A spokesman for Shropshire council’s regulatory services department has confirmed that it is investigating the incident.
The diners have yet to come forward.