Although many restaurants remain closed during the pandemic, for those who stay open, eating and having fun is still a problem, and even forced a Los Angeles restaurant owner to close the store, CBS Los Angeles reports.
According to the Los Angeles Times, a growing number of restaurants in the city have had trouble getting scammers to take advantage of Internet ordering to use fraudulent credit cards or request refunds, claiming they never received some or all of them. an order.
The Korean Fusion Cafe “Spoon by H” had the ingredients to become a Los Angeles success story, but it’s the epitome of a small business, with owner and chef Yoonjin Hwang working 15 hours a day to run the restaurant with his mother and brother.
“We don’t have staff. We don’t have cooks. I have to do it all by myself,” Hwang said. “Like so many other small businesses, the pandemic hit us hard. All we could do was grab it day in and day out and do what we could to stay afloat.”
But as restaurants receive more and more takeaway orders online and through apps, they face a new challenge called “friendly fraud” or “backlash”. In the scam, a customer asks for food, often through a delivery service, and then receives the food, but disputes the charge with the credit card company for a refund.
One day, Hwang got his largest order in history, for more than $ 700.
“He came, grabbed the food, and a week later discussed the charge,” Hwang said.
He lost food and money, and that kept happening, over and over again.
“I felt incredibly powerless and frustrated. We just couldn’t keep running our business like that,” he said. Therefore, he made the decision to permanently close the restaurant. Saturday will be his last day, to the displeasure of his customers.
“When I found out it was closing, I was devastated,” said Alyse Whitney, a client.
But the bosses watched their struggles and stepped in to help them, raising more than $ 60,000 on a GoFundMe page.
Hwang said, “It has been a wonderful reminder that there are more good things in the people around us and in our communities.”
Hwang plans to pay off his debt with the money raised and said he could consider opening a new business someday with the profits, but he doesn’t know when or what kind of business.