Restaurant Owner Won’t Apologize For Shaming LeSean McCoy Over $.20 Tip

The receipt for McCoy's meal was posted to the PYT Facebook page by the restaurant's owner.

The receipt for McCoy’s meal was posted to the PYT Facebook page by the restaurant’s owner.

Not to overwhelm the pages of Consumerist with stories about NFL running backs, but when the league’s best set of legs shows himself out to be one of the country’s worst tippers, we can’t not cover the story.

You may have already heard that Eagles RB LeSean McCoy stiffed a server at Philly eatery PYT — home of stunt foods like the Fried Chicken & Beer Burger, the Deep-Fried Twinkie Burger, and the Lasagna-Bun Burger — by leaving only $.20 on a $61.56 bill.

Everyone involved in this story has been the target of nasty, hateful comments and social media posts. People accuse McCoy of being rude and cheap. Some claimed the waiter doctored the receipt, or said he shouldn’t have gone public about the incident. Others say the owner is just publicity-hungry.

Well, in a letter posted this afternoon on the PYT Facebook page, that owner says he’d like to apologize to the record-breaking running back… but he just can’t.

First off, the owner clarifies that the waiter in this incident had nothing to do with posting the receipt on Facebook.

“I take total and complete responsibility for sharing this receipt,” he writes. “It was not our server’s decision, it was mine. I am to blame.

“I decided to take action after some serious thought,” continues the owner. “And while I’d like to apologize to Mr McCoy, I cannot in good conscience do so. I stand by my actions one hundred percent.”

He then recounts his side of the story, in which McCoy and three friends visited PYT on Monday and ended up sitting in a booth next to the owner and other managers.

“They were given excellent service. Impeccable service,” writes the owner. “If anything, our server was a little nervous as was our food runner, because they are big, big fans.”

However, he claims that McCoy and his friends quickly became “verbally abusive” to the staff, including derogatory comments about females.

The owner also says that after the group had left, he noticed the waiter was staring at the receipt left behind.

“I took the receipt out of his hand and I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so callous,” he writes. “Mr. McCoy had left a [.3%] tip for our staff… Twenty cents that our server has to split with the food runner and the bartender. Two dimes from an insulting multimillionaire.”

Giving McCoy the benefit of a doubt, the owner says he assumes that the football star is “usually an awesome dude” and maybe he was having a bad day. But he takes issues with claims from the player and his management that it was in response to bad service — a claim the owner labels as “a complete slanderous lie.”

“At the end of the day, I did what I felt my heart told me to do,” he explains. “And I don’t want anything from Mr McCoy, but…maybe an apology to his server who gave him excellent service would be cool.”

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