The owner of a New Jersey pizzeria is standing her ground after a video showed her scolding a family for bringing their own birthday cake into her restaurant. The clip has since exploded online, but she says the outrage is missing key context.
Doreen Sullivan-Karcich, who runs Joey Tomato’s on the Jenkinson’s boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, insists she was just enforcing long-standing rules. The confrontation happened during a child’s fifth birthday party when the group asked for a knife to slice their own cake.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the family-owned spot pushed back against the 𝓿𝒾𝓇𝒶𝓁 backlash. “Let’s talk about that video,” they wrote, explaining that the clip only showed the tail end of a much longer conversation. “No context.
No beginning. Just a clip, built for outrage.”
The restaurant made it clear they are not a party venue or a bakery. “We are a pizza restaurant,” the statement read. “We built our name on pizza — the kind the Jersey Shore is known for.”
Sullivan-Karcich was caught on camera telling the group, “You don’t just walk into a restaurant and do whatever you want.” She even asked how they’d feel if she showed up at their house with a cake. The video was shared by Tom Jurkowski, who runs the Jersey Coast Emergency News account and was there celebrating his nephew.
Despite the heat, the owners aren’t backing down. “Those policies aren’t up for a public vote just because one moment of enforcing them got recorded,” they said. They even joked about changing their tagline to “We don’t do cake.
We do pizza.”
Social media wasn’t impressed. One commenter wrote, “I can’t believe you thought this was a good idea.” Another said, “I’m sorry would have worked, and no one would be pissed.”
So, is this a case of a small business protecting its rules, or a missed chance to just be kind?
