A group of 14 diners has been urged to come and pay their £400 restaurant bill, or the venue’s boss will call the police.
The team behind Rokka, a restaurant in Bromborough, was left feeling “deflated” after the group walked out on Saturday evening without paying their £404 bill, the Liverpool Echo reported.
Posting on the restaurant's Instagram page, the boss gave their former customers an ultimatum - pay up or they will go to the police and release CCTV images of them online.
In the post, they said: "Unfortunately tonight we have had a party of 14 leave an unpaid bill of over £400.
"They received the same great service and good quality as all our paying customers this evening.
"We are giving this table the benefit of the doubt, to pay within 48 hours before we report this incident to the police and release their images on our social media.
"We are an independently run business with a small team and we work hard to get where we are and we deserve better than this."
Front of house worker Christina, who helped to serve the group on Saturday night, said the booking had originally been made for 10 people.
However, when 14 of them arrived, staff moved tables and chairs to accommodate the extra numbers.
The 35-year-old said: "We are a very small independent business. We turned people away for them because we didn't have room…”
“So we've lost paying customers as well as losing £404."
When the bill arrived, Christina said four men from the group came to the counter to pay rather than waiting at their table for it to be brought to them.
In the meantime, the rest of the party left the restaurant and got into cars outside.
"When they've asked for the bill they've seen the price of it, they've proceeded to barter the price of the bill down saying they're not paying that,” Christina said.
"Everything off their plates was gone. There was no food left over, they sent nothing back.
"It's only upon paying the bill that the issue happens."
"I said 'you don't need a cash machine, we take card payments' and as I turned around to direct him back into the restaurant he jumps in a car and he makes his exit."
Christina said the man called the restaurant after he left last night to apologise and said he would return to the restaurant at 11.30am this morning with the money for the bill.
However, it seemed to be an empty promise, with the man having never turned up.
"We feel really deflated, we work extremely hard,” Christina added.
"It's called hospitality for a reason. We want you to come in, we want you to have a nice time. If there's a problem we want to fix it but when we have tables like that it affects the rest of the restaurant and the rest of our customers who are trying to have a nice time."
She wanted to send the message to the customers that there would be “no judgement” if they decided to pay up now.
“We are giving them the benefit of the doubt to collect that money and come and pay us because we deserve to be paid for the meals and the food. We don't care about tips, we just want what is owed to us.
"No one is going to shout at them, no one is going to get them in trouble.
"Once the 48 hours is up we'll report the incident to police and we will release their images because we don't want any other businesses to have to go through what we did last night."
