Texas Roadhouse Serves Up Sangria To 2-Year-Old Girl

When you order a cranberry juice for your 2-year-old daughter and the server brings her a glass containing a dark red beverage, you probably wouldn’t think to sample the drink to make sure she hadn’t been given a glass full of boozy sangria.

But that’s exactly what happened to a family in Asheville, NC, recently during a visit to their local Texas Roadhouse restaurant.

The family says their daughter began drinking the “cranberry” juice but complained that it tasted odd. The parents took a taste and confirmed their kid wasn’t just being a picky eater.

“Two year old drinking sangria,” said the dad to WLOS-TV [via Eater.com]. “It was supposed to be cranberry juice.”

The girl’s mom says her daughter was “staggering and she was kissing everything” after imbibing the sangria.

The youngster was taken to the hospital and checked out by a physician.

“I had to rub her belly the whole night and she slept with us because I was scared she might not wake up,” said the mom. “That she’d choke on her throw up and not wake up. It was the most horrible feeling ever.”

The restaurant apologized to the family, claiming it was an honest mistake, and refunded them the cost of their whole meal.

UPDATE: A rep for Texas Roadhouse’s corporate office claims that not all the facts were included in the original news reports about this incident.

“Unfortunately, we accidentally served sangria to the child,” reads a statement from the company. “We are 100% in error and our employees have owned up to that fact.”

Even though our story made no implication that the child was immediately taken to the hospital, Texas Roadhouse states that 9-1-1 wasn’t called until approximately an hour after the child drank the not-cranberry juice.

“Our manager went to the hospital with the family,” reads the statement, which claims that the young girl’s symptoms “were related to that of an upper respiratory infection, which the doctor diagnosed that night.” (NOTE: We have no way of checking the accuracy of that assertion and we’re not asserting that it is true.)

“Our processes and procedures are designed to prevent this from happening, but unfortunately human error occurred,” concludes the statement. “We are thankful that Gabriela is okay and we are taking this incident as an opportunity to improve our procedures in order to prevent this from occurring again.”

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