“Please don’t support our establishment. This is a formal refusal of service.”
A Wisconsin man says he was confronted in person by the co-owner of a Stoughton, Wisconsin, diner, the Kozy Nuk Cafe, while eating breakfast with his wife and kid, after the owner spotted a one-sentence quip he wrote about bringing ICE to town on the local Police Department’s Facebook page. The cafe then called him hateful online, accused ICE of terrorizing “immigrants,” and accused him (or ICE) of white privilege.
But it doesn’t end there, and we have the receipts.
Screenshots of Facebook comments allegedly made by the Kozy Nuk Cafe show the cafe – which boasts that it offers “friendly people” on its sign – is allegedly denying service to additional customers who expressed positive views about ICE on social media or who support securing the border. In short, the cafe appears to be scouring comments on social media and then banning conservative pro-ICE customers who make them.
One of those customers, Wesley Ismert, a Stoughton man who works in manufacturing, confirmed to Wisconsin Right Now that he was banned from the cafe for defending border security on their Facebook page. He is not the first man who wrote on the police page; Ismert says he was banned after he defended ICE on a post Kozy Nuk made about the first situation.
The first customer, who wants to stay anonymous due to the current climate, explained to WRN in an interview, “The comment I said was on the Stoughton police page. I never said anything to the business or business owner. They took it into their own hands to try to talk down to me and accuse me of being racist and white-privileged.”
That’s not all. There’s at least a third customer affected by the cafe’s alleged bans, which appear to derive from comments the cafe’s owners object to on social media – not from anything people have said AT the establishment itself.
“Sounds to me the cafe is anti-ICE, that is anti-law enforcement,” the third man wrote.
“You’ve been in before. Don’t come back,” Kozy Nuk Cafe responded.
This all went down shortly before the Renee Good shooting.
We wrote the diner three times seeking response to the email listed on their website but received none. We also left a message for the owner with a woman who answered the phone. She said the owner was busy.
‘It’s Ridiculous’
Ismert, of Stoughton, says that he simply posted on the Kozy Nuk’s Facebook post, after the cafe slammed the first man and after Kozy Nuk wrote that ICE was being deployed to terrorize people. He says he defended the need for border security and responded, paraphrasing here, that “ICE is not here to do that. They are here to do their jobs. They are Americans.” He says he didn’t even agree with the first man’s post on the police page, calling it “goofy.”
“The lady said it was repulsive, and I could take it as a formal denial of service at the Kozy Nuk,” he added. “I’ve eaten there a couple times; they have great food. But I’d rather not sit across from the table from someone who can’t have a conversation.” He stressed he didn’t make the comment AT their cafe, but rather on the “public forum” they initiated.
The diner is accused of retorting, “Please don’t support our establishment. This is a formal refusal of service.” Here is a screenshot of the cafe’s alleged comment refusing service to Ismert; although the screenshot we received doesn’t have their name on it, he confirmed that the Kozy Nuk Cafe wrote this response to him on its Facebook page:
In a comment back, Ismert called it “honestly sad that you’re choosing to now ban me for an opinion about a real issue.”
He also referred to the decision as “foul” in an exchange with another person on the cafe’s thread.
“I am taking it seriously,” he told WRN of the refusal of service. “If you disagree with them in any form or fashion or at any location, they use the fact they have a restaurant to ban you from it,” he alleged. “It’s ridiculous.”
Let’s unravel what went down further. What did the first customer write, exactly?
‘Do We Need to Get ICE in Town?’
Stoughton police wrote on Facebook, “Last night, SPD responded to multiple calls of unlocked vehicles being gone through and property taken from the vehicles. One vehicle that was unlocked was also stolen and found crashed. Please remember to lock all house and vehicle doors at all times.”
The first customer responded in the police comment thread, “Do we need to get ICE in town?”
That quip allegedly so enraged the diner’s owner that, when the man came into the cafe for breakfast, that’s when the owner allegedly personally confronted him. He says he doesn’t personally know the owner; he just goes to the cafe for breakfast sometimes. A Google review war of words then erupted, and the cafe subsequently allegedly trashed the customer in a lengthy, now-deleted Facebook post.
When the customer defended himself on the cafe’s Facebook page, saying he’s not a hateful racist, the cafe allegedly responded by raging, “ICE agents are being deployed as a way to terrorize immigrants and anyone else who isn’t the color white,” adding that the situation was “white privilege at its finest.”
And that’s when other conservative customers started weighing in, alleging that they had been treated similarly and even banned from the diner.
The Kozy Nuk Cafe also allegedly went into a lengthy rant about ICE in Facebook comments.
‘You Should Be Ashamed,’ the Kozy Nuk Cafe Allegedly Told the First Customer
The first customer spoke extensively to Wisconsin Right Now about the situation.
“I had an issue at a local restaurant in Stoughton,” the customer told Wisconsin Right Now.
“To start off, I made a comment on the Stoughton police page about car robberies happening in the area. I made the comment ‘maybe we should get ice into town??’ That was all I said. The next morning, I went to my local breakfast restaurant, which I have multiple times, called Kozy Nuk Cafe, with my wife and child.”
“I ordered breakfast, and instead of the waitress bringing me my order, the cook came back out in the kitchen to bring me my breakfast (he is the owner), and he asked me if I’ve heard about the cars being broken into, and I said I did. And he then said it’s racist for you to say we need to bring ICE into town. I said there’s nothing racist about ICE, and I left it at that.”
The customer continued: “I did not eat my meal and waited for my wife to finish eating before leaving. I didn’t say anything about ICE inside the restaurant, nothing like that at all; I just talked to some people I knew in the restaurant and had a conversation with my wife like I usually do before this took place. The owner must have seen my comment on the public Stoughton police page. After that incident with the owner, I then went on to leave a one-star review on Google, complaining about the incident. The owner replied to my review saying I’m full of hate and racist.”
Continued the customer, “The owner then went on to make a big giant long post on Facebook accusing me of being racist without any proper context of the comment I made on the police page.”
A Google Review Page War Erupts
The cafe’s comment to the first customer is still visible on the Google review page.
“You and anyone else who wants to spread hate, hurtful comments, sarcasm or any other negative behavior on another human being based on the color of their skin or demographic are not welcome in our establishment. True community members witnessed your comments and you should be ashamed, as should previously mentioned ex customers,” the Kozy Nuk Cafe responded on Google after the first customer left the one-star review complaining about the encounter.
The customer’s Google review is still up as well. In it, he alleges, “Usually a great place to eat breakfast! Unfortunately today the owner decided to personally serve my breakfast with a side of politics. Which I did not order with the meal… Sadly this has happened to other people before and I never believed it. (Two other men) have also (allegedly) had the same thing happen to them before…Owners will respond with completely false claim about racism and made up statements. If you are remotely conservative person they will discriminate against you.”
It didn’t end there. The cafe then went on a full-blown rant against the customer on its Facebook page.
In that rant, the cafe took aim at the customer again, saying, “We will never allow any customer to come in to our home and show such a blatant disregard for others. This has nothing to do with ‘politics’ and everything to do with hate in the heart.”
The cafe wrote that it felt it needed to “defend our territory,” and added, “This man was recently sighted posting hate filled and hurtful comments on our community page (which we saw) and then came in a short time later to break bread at our beloved home away from home. We spoke up. See something, say something.”
Again, the customer says his entire “offense” was writing the single quip on the Stoughton Police Department’s Facebook page and then the Google review.
What Is the Kozy Nuk Cafe in Stoughton, Wisconsin?
The website for the Kozy Nuk Cafe says the business has locations in Stoughton and Cottage Grove, Wisconsin. “Adan and Meggan set out to redefine the traditional diner experience,” the website explains. “Adan’s culinary journey started at a young age, learning the art of cooking from his mother in Mexico before honing his skills at establishments like the renowned Koffee Kup in Stoughton.” The diner’s owners are Meggan O’Brien and Adan Reyes.
The Yelp and Google reviews are generally good. “Whether you’re dining in Cottage Grove or Stoughton, you’ll always be welcomed like an old friend,” the cafe’s website continues. The page also wrote on Facebook that Reyes “worked his butt off to become a U.S. citizen.”
According to CNN, whether a business can refuse a customer service “depends on a number of factors, including whether the business’s reasons are political, moral or discriminatory, and the person claiming discrimination falls under a protected trait or class, such as race or religion.” See their thorough analysis of that angle here.
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