Jimmy’s Famous Seafood gained backlash for ‘picking on’ a woman of colour who owns a vegan café.
Plant-based chef and owner of the Vegan Hippie Café Dominique Williamson posted her vegan take on a crab cake by using jackfruit on her Twitter and Instagram accounts. This prompted seafood restaurant Jimmy’s Famous Seafood (JFS) to retweet Williamson’s sweet with a meme of a judgemental Will Smith.
Williamson decided to respond to the eatery stating: “Companies like this really piss me off. Why would you quote my photo so now a bunch of your followers can harass me about a vegan post? No one cares if you wanna serve seafood, but honeyyyyy you don’t gotta make me the joke to make some profits. Profit on your own.”
This led to the chef receiving, what she calls, harassment from JFS’s followers with racist, sexist messages and tweets, as she is a woman of colour, along with someone reporting her tweet for hate speech. Over the last 24 hours, her company’s website has been spammed with hate speech, with many using derogatory terms and graphic imagery, with one being of a black man being lynched.
Williamson’s sister has also talked about the situation on her TikTok account, and Williamson herself has been vocal on Instagram and Twitter asking why the harassment has started over “some crabcakes”.
@blackbeltbabeJimmy’s Famous Seafood & their followers are on twitter harassing a black woman owned business for no reason. 1 star them please. ##fyp ##TheOldGuard♬ original sound – blackbeltbabe
Some supporters of Williamson have given JFS a one-star rating on Google. And one supporter emailed the company, pointing out their unprofessionalism and how cruel they have been on their Twitter account.
JFS tweeted a screenshot of the email and wrote: “Which one of you butthurt vegans tried snitching?”
Following the backlash, JFS’s Twitter account has been set to private; however, their Instagram remains active. This is not the first time JFS has ‘trolled’ vegans on their Twitter account, as they are known for their tweets against PETA.
JFS has previously joked about their vegan option being a feta salad, and when someone pointed out that feta is not vegan they replied with: “We really don’t care.” Another tweet, that was also shared on its Facebook account, said, “You demanded it, we listened – vegan options are here! Enjoy this organic rosemary while we carve into this savory prime rib!”
Williamson has tweeted that the majority of JFS’s followers have stopped harassing her and hopes “this all boils over and they stop trolling small vegan companies”.
