Adelaide restaurant offers free meals to guide dog owners as apology
Adelaide restaurant Little NNQ owner is offering free meals to guide dog owners to make up for a “stupid” mistake by its staff who denied entry to a woman with a registered assistance dog.
Ellen Fraser-Barbour, who suffers from vision and hearing impairments, was turned away from the Gouger St eatery by staff who insisted there were no exceptions to its ban on dogs.
“I kept explaining to the server that it’s illegal but they kept saying ‘no, it’s a dog’,” she told The Advertiser.
“And then a second staff member backed him ... in the end I had to give up and left.”
She then lodged a complaint to both the Human Rights Commission and SA police.
NNQ group owner Jennifer Crawford described the incident as a “stupid, honest mistake” brought about by a lack of experience from a supervisor in his first managerial shift.
Crawford told The Advertiser that the restaurant and the manager had both made donations to Guide Dogs SA and they would offer free meals to guide-dog owners throughout next month.
Fraser-Barbour said she was not out to get NNQ personally, “but I really want people to realise this is a regular occurrence and it happens a lot”.
Sheridan Randall, 31st January 2019
