My family contacted you directly in March 2015 by phone after you posted the review about our family business on Google.

Our intention was customer satisfaction driven only, to find out what we could do better for you as a customer. During that conversation, we discussed your concerns and explained several issues we had experienced due to slow traffic during the Winter months, as well as that we couldn’t carry every beverage available on the market during the slow period of the year as it was financially not possible. We offered you to visit us again, to have any of our products on the house. It was a nice conversation and we ended it with a sincere invitation to make things right for you.

Since then, you have visited our store numerous times. The last time we took care of you, your wife and son personally on Memorial Day weekend of 2015. You appeared happy and seemed to have an enjoyable shopping experience as you were all smiles and polite while checking out.

When you visit the store you’re friendly, have no grievances, nor do you bring any to our attention when we check you out for your purchases. Therefore when you visited again this week, I explained to my husband, who you were, he has trouble hearing, as he’s a former drummer. I had to raise my voice and he didn’t really know what I was talking about at the time.

We greeted you in a friendly manner and my exact words were “Hi, how are you, oh you’re back again, maybe you’ll change your review”. This was all in good nature and in a joking manner. I said this because it seems odd that you would continue to come in all the time yet not address our previous conversation at all. As business owners we had made several honest attempts directly reaching out to you to rectify whatever grievance you had with our business.

We support the community by employing over 20 local students and community members. We invested in the business because as residents of the town for 15 years, we grew to love the people who live in the town. Our vision when we purchased the store was to bring community events and family activities to the area. We donate our entire property in the back of the building to host a non-profit farmers market every Saturday. We do our best to maintain a charming, welcoming environment and have received so much gratitude because of it.

Despite our best efforts, the fact that you continued to patronize our business, while at the same time harassing our staff and us by posting hateful words is inhumane. Unfortunately, your actions do not affect the business owners; they also affect the entire staff and disparage their efforts.

Your hate speech hurts the staff, some of which are just local kids. Think about the impact of your actions and the affect it can have on a community.

As this appeared to be a direct personal assault on us because it is persistent, repeated and abusive in tone, we contact the authorities and yes you are no longer welcome/permitted in our store, nor our entire property which hosts the farmers market every Saturday during the summer months. We have the right to protect ourselves and our staff from what we think are evil malicious people.