Colorado Restaurant Abruptly Closes After Owner Rants On Yelp

We've all seen plenty of keyboard warriors vent online about all things - big or small. Especially when it comes to the customer service industry, there's always someone with an opinion. Sometimes those opinions are positive, sometimes they are not. Sometimes they go a bit over the top and business owners generally have to grow thick skin to withstand the onslaught of feedback from all corners of the internet.

Yelp is one of those forums for people to pay compliments or give criticism, and usually is a treasure trove of entertaining reviews when you're trying to decide to check a place out or skip it. In many cases the business owner responds, but oftentimes they don't.

In the case of one Denver restaurant patron who was upset because their reservation had been cancelled without any warning or reason given, they did get a response from the restaurant owner directly. And it was a doozy.

A Yelp user posted on Feb. 15, "My reservation I made weeks ago was cancelled without any reason at random and now the restaurant is booked up for the time and we've been forced to last minute organize other plans."

The owner - Kevin Jennings, from Urban Food Group which is based in North Carolina - fired back on the same day:

We lost thousands and thousands of dollars trying to stay open after covid. Lodo offices are empty- we can't even do 1/2 of the sales we were achieving before covid. We paid to keep the place open for the last two years- we are now closed for good- so no- we aren't booked. We lost our ass and are now done-

All you idiots running this town can do is raise the minimum wage running small business owners out of business. Cry me a river about your dinner reservations.

And shortly thereafter came the official - more politely worded - announcement on their social media.

Avelina in LoDo had been open since 2016 and boasted some really great reviews, in addition to a bit of press back in 2021 as one of their chefs was a contestant on Gordon Ramsay's "Hell's Kitchen."

After the Yelp response and closing down, Jennings spoke with Westword and elaborated on the decision to close, further going off on the "wealthy libs" running the city. You can check out that full story and interview on their website.