CLEVELAND — A viral video of a Topline Heating and Air employee throwing food inside Rockin' Robyn's on Buckeye Road while cursing at a staff member has turned into a full-circle moment.
In late June, Rockin' Robyn's posted surveillance video of three men, all of whom were wearing Topline Heating and Air shirts, waiting in the restaurant's lobby.
In the video, you can hear a Rockin' Robyn's employee tell one of the men, who appeared to have complained about his food, that the restaurant doesn't do refunds, but that a fresh meal would be made instead.
In front of the gentleman were two signs indicating the restaurant has a no refund policy.
The man asks to be handed the takeout box with the newly made meal. He then rips apart the Styrofoam box and flings the food all over the lobby of the restaurant.
Before leaving, the man can be heard telling a Rockin' Robyn's employee, "Clean that s*** off the floor, b****."
Rockin' Robyn's owner, Robyn Matthews, said she was on the phone with her employee as the interaction was happening, even logging into her surveillance camera to see what was going on.
"I can hear him in the background. I'm like, does he wanna like talk to me or something? Maybe I could help the situation or something," Matthews said. "I literally watched that live. Why would you do that? That's so disrespectful. This industry is already hard enough. I feel like, you know, you can't please everybody. I've been stressed here. I'm just like, wow, why would you do that to my business? I work hard and I'm not gonna lie, that bothered me because don't treat people like that."
While Matthews understands it's nothing personal, she said she still takes it to heart.
"I don't know him, he doesn't know me, but this is my business. This is what I work for. This is my livelihood. I can't have people like that," Matthews said.
After the incident happened, Matthews took to social media to call out the individual's behavior. She posted the surveillance for her nearly 12,000 followers to see.
"I didn't think it was gonna blow up like that," Matthews said.
Overnight, it went viral with thousands of likes and hundreds of comments, even capturing the attention of one of the owners of Topline Heating and Air, Lyle Horst.
"Right away [I] was disappointed to see it, obviously, we, you know, can't control everyone's actions, but what we can do is we can control how we respond to it," Horst said.
Topline Air and Heating confirms the man caught on camera throwing the food is no longer employed with the company. Topline has two locations in Ohio: Canton and Dayton.
"I reached out to the restaurant right away and talked to the employee that was working that day, just got her story, apologized for what happened because we're sorry that, that happened. I talked to the owner of the restaurant, they're super nice. I went on Instagram and I saw right away their cheesesteaks and was just amazed," Horst said.
Seeing Rockin' Robyn's cheesesteaks sparked an idea for Horst.
To go beyond an employee termination and apology, Topline Heating and Air is paying for the first 200 cheesesteak purchases on Friday, July 10, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Matthews said both chicken and steak cheesesteaks will be available.
"Let's do something to support the restaurant," he told me on Wednesday.
Horst said he'll even be traveling from Topline's main headquarters in Pennsylvania to be there at Rockin' Robyn's on Friday.
"I wasn't expecting that gesture with him either, but I mean, that's very nice of him. He did feel very bad. I was just appreciative. It was a very receptive conversation," Matthews said. "That will show, you know, the people that he may have been in a Topline shirt, but that is not who Topline is, so I think that that will be good. I'm hoping to have a great turnout with that on Friday."
