Why black restaurants struggle with customer service

An in-depth analysis

When I think of a black restaurant, I think of a place in a run down strip mall that serves either fried rice or breaded, deep fried chicken wings, or ideally both.

Pretty much everything they sell comes with french fries and two pieces of white bread on the arm, which is incredibly generous of them.

They charge extra for packets of soy sauce and/or ketchup, because they’re frequented by the kind of people who pursue demanding additional quantities of condiments at a fast food restaurant as a wealth strategy, but I can understand why that’s necessary.

I’ve seen the proprietors get ignorant with customers who claimed they were shorted a crab rangoon the last time they were there, which is a damn lie, but I’ve personally never had a problem with them.

Even if I did, I know better than to go behind the counter and attempt to put a shoe on any of the employees—even if it’s just an old lady working there.

You don’t know what that old lady had to do to get to the US.

I’m trying to get into better shape, on the outside chance that I’m ever forced to defend myself in prison, so I don’t get to eat in places like that as often as I’d like, i.e. daily, but I do love them.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that there’s another type of black restaurant, catering to the needs of brothers and sisters of means, who I guess think they’re too good to go to the Cheesecake Factory.

Maybe that’s where that one black chick wanted to go when she refused to get out of that soft, ethnic guy’s car and had to be driven home. He didn’t even have the balls to forcefully eject her from a moving vehicle like Gucci Mane. Tragic!

It could be that St. Louis doesn’t have the critical mass of gainfully employed black people necessary to support such an establishment. One of our Amazon warehouses got taken out by a tornado, so that didn’t help matters.

If there’s a single ostensibly high class black restaurant here, I’m not familiar with it. Atlanta, on the other hand, is apparently lousy with them, as if they were Dollar General.

(I was in Atlanta once for like a week, and aside from a meal I had in a strip club, I mostly just ate at Wendy’s. When I explained this to Killer Mike, he was highly disappointed.)

I’m assuming these places sell those meals you sometimes see people offering for sale via X f/k/a Twitter, with some sort of shellfish covered with melted cheese, served with french fries (required with any black meal, regardless of where it’s from) and with a healthy dusting of freeze dried parsley flakes, to give it that added visual flair. Perhaps the least kosher meal imaginable, and at a time like this.

The service must not be any good either. Some guy named Keith Lee was forced to put several Atlanta-area establishments on notice this week after receiving piss-poor customer service. Apparently, he flies to different cities and reviews their black restaurants on TikTok. I can’t click on any of his videos, because I’ve got my algorithm just the way I like it. (You can imagine what my feed consists of.)

Some of these places, he said, won’t allow you to wait inside, but also won’t allow you to make reservations. Admittedly, I can see how expecting people to show up at a certain time to eat would be unrealistic, given the clientele. Similarly, I can’t blame them for not allowing people to order entrées, take a few bites and send them back to the kitchen—a sort of hood dim sum—which I hear is a thing in “the community.”

But some of the other things these restaurants are doing don’t make any sense to me. One place, he said, told his family they were closed when they tried to order carryout, but then offered him a table when he showed up himself. I’ve had similar situations at Popeyes, where the kitchen staff decided it was time for a smoke break before they could prepare my meal. Their priorities were all out of order. The difference is, there was a white guy there to tell them they either needed to make my lunch or hop their ass back on the bus to an even sketchier part of town.

As much as it pains me to say this, therein lies the problem. Our people, left to our own devices, don’t have the sense to run an establishment with regular business hours. When it’s too cold outside, we’d rather not work. When it’s too hot outside, we’d rather not work. And when the weather’s just right? It’s time for a barbecue. I have no idea who Keith Lee is, nor do I intend to familiarize myself with his work, but I appreciate the fact that he’s out here putting these restaurants on notice. Sometimes you need someone to pull you to the side and try to talk some sense into you.