Posted on 06/23/2019 2:53:59 AM PDT by Drango
LEXINGTON — One year ago today, the owner of The Red Hen in Lexington asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to leave her restaurant. News of the incident spread across the country within minutes after Sanders tweeted about what happened. Protestors traveled to the 7,000-person city and gathered outside the restaurant with signs, chants and in one case, chicken poop.
The restaurant’s phone line was hacked, fake Yelp reviews caused its rates to plummet and dozens of people made fake reservations. The Red Hen closed for 10 days as national media converged on Lexington. President Donald Trump joined in on Twitter to call the restaurant dirty.
The city’s director of marketing, Patty Williams, said the tourism office received thousands of letters and phone calls after the incident, and many of them were from people who said they would never visit the area again.
But according to a survey conducted by the region’s tourism office and the city’s tax records, the incident seems to have had little effect on Lexington.
Sanders visited The Red Hen, a 26-seat, farm-to-table restaurant on Washington Street, on June 22, 2018. The restaurant’s chef called the owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, to ask what they should do because some of the employees felt uncomfortable serving Sanders.
Wilkinson told The Washington Post, the only media outlet she has spoken to about the incident, that she drove to the restaurant, huddled with her employees and asked what they wanted her to do. In the end, she asked Sanders to leave.
The national response shocked the region. The local tourism board, which includes representatives from Lexington, Rockbridge County and Buena Vista, decided to pull together emergency funds to increase digital marketing and to spread positive messages of the area, especially Lexington, which brings in the largest number of tourists.
The tourism office agreed to spend an additional $5,000 per month from the office’s emergency fund from July through September. The tourism office receives 0.8% of the lodging and meals tax collected from each locality. About 20% of its annual budget, which is around $800,000 total, is put into a reserve for emergencies.
The board also requested a survey be done on the perceptions of Lexington and the surrounding area after the incident.
Performed by Gray Research Solutions, of Nashville, Tennessee, the study involved interviews with about 100 people, each from Roanoke, Richmond, Norfolk and Washington, D.C. — Lexington’s top tourism markets — about whether they remembered the incident, where it took place and what effect it would have on their decision to visit Lexington.
On average, about 77% of people were aware of the incident at The Red Hen with Sanders, and 66% of those people knew it happened in Lexington.
About 75% of respondents said the incident had no impact on their interest in traveling to Lexington. Only 12% said that it did, and the rest responded maybe. Of the people who responded yes or maybe, half of them are now less interested in traveling to Lexington.
The survey concluded, overall, only 13% of the 400 surveyed said they were less interested in visiting Lexington because of the Red Hen incident.
The city’s meals and lodging taxes were steady in the immediate aftermath of the incident and have been throughout the past year.
Gary Swink, the city’s finance director, said meals tax revenues were currently up 1.6% , and the lodging taxes were up 6.4% from last year. July 2018, which is the month when the city would have collected taxes for restaurant sales in June, was about the same as 2017. And August and September were higher than the same month the previous year, he said.
Meanwhile, The Red Hen continues to thrive and has found a new group of supporters nationwide.
Wilkinson said in an email that supporters have made donations to local nonprofits inThe Red Hen’s name or purchased restaurant gift certificates to donate to local charities.
Project Horizon, an anti-domestic violence program, bundled the value of its gift certificates to auction off a private dinner for 26 at The Red Hen, Wilkinson said. The Lexington Police Foundation, the Rockbridge Area Relief Association and the Rockbridge NAACP have also benefited from Red Hen supporters.
Wilkinson also started a fundraiser on Facebook to benefit the Committee to Protect Journalists and raised more than $6,000 in six days.
The Red Hen added a shop to its Facebook page in December and has sold hats, aprons and a seasoning mix. The first apron shipment sold out in just over a week, according to Facebook posts.
Opponents of Wilkinson’s actions still troll the page, but most posts are from people who say The Red Hen is now a bucket list location. One man said he plans to travel from as far as New Zealand to eat at the restaurant.
Wilkinson declined to comment on the incident beyond pointing to local charities that have benefitted.
Last month she published an op-ed in the Washington Post that said her business and the local area were thriving. She wrote that for every negative comment she received about the incident, there was a donation to support the restaurant or local charities.
She ended the piece, “And to everyone who might be fearful about taking a stand, I say don’t be. Resistance is not futile, for you or your business.”
Earlier this month, Sanders announced she would step down from her position as press secretary at the end of June. Trump has not chosen a replacement, but has publicly stated he thinks Sanders should run for governor in Arkansas.
What is it were:
The restaurant’s chef called the owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, to ask what they should do because some of the employees felt uncomfortable serving a Black person.
Hateful people eventually get what’s coming to them, she’s not above that law.
With the CPI up 1.6% year over year in May in the Alexandria area, that means there was almost no real growth in meal taxes. While lodging taxes are up, about half of that is inflation and likely tax rate increases. Further, if restaurant taxes are flat, then if you remove inflation that means real restaurant tax collections are down.
There is no doubt that left-leaning statists descended upon Lexington to support the hate, and the restaurant cashed in in the hate with merchandise sales to offset any falling restaurant attendance. Eventually there will be a hipper place of hate to eat and then what?
Finally, a 13% bad name recognition isn't something to write home about.
Let’s see...the tourism agency had to spend thousands of extra dollars to overcome the bad publicity, the Red Hen had to close ten days and hundreds if not thousands of people were insulted by the owners idiocy.....sure everything is hunky dory!!!
Guess where I'd eat.
The newspaper is owned by the BH Media Group.
BH as in Berkshire Hathaway.
Nuff said, eh? :-)
So, this year’s receipts are about the same as last year’s - when they were shut down for 10 days?
Sounds like a fail.
An investigative reporter should put a video camera recording patrons entering the front door. Count the people for a week. I suspect the Red Hen is fudging the number of customers.
Honestly, who really cares how many customers they have ?
I'd love to see Trump visit for a meal and see them toss him out...LOL...
The media seems to only care if it makes the Orange Man look bad. They really haven't done any investigative reporting to see if the Red Hen narrative that business is up is remotely true. They are acting as stenographers not reporters.
Pure propaganda. If they were doing so well, why publish this now?
I’ll avoid The Red Hen if I ever drive through Lexington...
I’ll avoid Lexington. I’m sure red hen doesnt publicize the fact most people come there for evil southernor Stone Wall Jackson’s birthplace and other Confederate history and VMI.
That would be whistling past the graveyard on their part. Which Rats do all the time.
The REAL effect is how normal people look at the incident and realize that, in the event of total Rat control of our society (heaven forbid) we Normals would become second class citizens, or worse.
Instead of yellow stars on our clothing, we would have Red M s for MAGA or some such.
We would be forbidden to eat at the Red Hen or other hipster Rat communist restaurants, to teach, to be professors, be doctors or lawyers, to run companies, own businesses or property.
Next we would be rounded up.
So, even though many Normals may still go to the Red Hen in Lexington, and eat there, and brag about it, they still remember how crazy, hating, irrational, petty, childish, and cruel Rats are, because of how quickly and thoughtlessly they ran Sarah Sanders out of their restaurant.
And with not a lot of imagination needed, they can foresee the Rats' putting Normals into rail cars and trucks and taking us away to unpublicized camps.
The incident lives on in the minds of Normals, even though their business is still doing OK.
So they interviewed only people traveling from blue cities and from that extrapolated that everything is hunky dory?
Red Hen Restaurant owner stalked Sarah Sanders’ family – organized a mob and followed the very liberal, in-laws to the nearby restaurant to continue their ALT-left harassment.
Sarah and her husband just went home, they’d had enough..
leftist Stephanie Wilkinson followed Sarah Sanders’ leftie, in-laws across the street to harass them at the other restaurant they went to.
...
Twitter, Facebook, Google = Youtube ban conservatives all they want..
Lexington is the home of two great universities that I know of - Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University.
Wilkinson’s husband, you know, the one wearing the pink p*ssy hat in a picture, teaches at VMI.
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