NYC Restaurant Holds Fake Contest, Misleads Customers, And Collects Email Addresses
hat tip Consumerist.com
A small glatt kosher restaurant in New York City's East Village ran a contest where people submitted names for the new restaurant. According to the official rules (all 33 words of it), the $3,000 "will be given to the first person who entered the name we will choose." Eric writes in to note that they've announced their new name—Kosher Village—but they haven't announced any winner. To make things more suspicious, they also registered the domain name "koshervillagenyc.com" on April 12th, over two weeks before the contest ended this past Monday the 28th. Eric adds that "the in-store sign for Kosher Village was put up this weekend, also before the contest deadline." So was there ever a $3k prize, or was the entire contest a scam to drum up publicity and collect email addresses?
contest home page
Sounds pretty fishy to me. But the menu looks pretty good and the prices are reasonable. I hope this is a mistake.
menu
OTOH, If the story is true, I would urge the OU Kashrus administrators to be certain that they want their heksher on this establishment. Its a sign of bad business to do such a thing, halachic considerations and legal considerations of fraud aside and a consumer fairly or unfairly could be led to presume things about the kashrus of an establishment that would be willing to hold a phony contest. Like I said, I hope it is an oversight and a mistake or bad information so that I can come back and report the matter closed. If anyone knows that an award was given, please let me and the Consumerist website know.
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