NJ Pizzeria Owner Responds To Birthday Cake Backlash: 'We Are Not A Party Venue'

POINT PLEASANT BEACH, NJ — A pizzeria owner has responded at last to the backlash sparked by a video of her rant after a customer asked for a knife to cut a birthday cake at the Point Pleasant Beach restaurant.

Doreen Sullivan-Karcich of Joey Tomato's, the pizzeria on the Jenkinson's boardwalk, had not responded since the video was shared by Tom Jurkowski, the creator of the social media accounts Vintage New Jersey over the weekend.

The incident happened at Joey Tomato's on the boardwalk on Saturday, when Jurkowski and family members went there to celebrate the birthday of his 5-year-old nephew. He said they had called ahead and asked an employee if they could bring a cake and were told it was OK and said they offered to pay any additional fee to do so.

After asking to borrow a knife to cut the cake for the boy, Jurkowski said, Karcich began yelling at the group. Partway into her response, Jurkowski began taking the video "because this was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced," he said.

In it she can be heard yelling at a woman from the group, saying it was inappropriate for them to have brought a cake to the restaurant.

"You don't just walk into a restaurant and do whatever you want," Karcich says. "How about if I just come to your house with a cake?"

In the response she posted late Wednesday, titled "Every Story Has Two Sides," Karcich stood by her response.

"For a few days now, the internet has decided it knows everything about our restaurant based on thirty seconds of footage that started after the real conversation was already underway," she wrote. "No context. No beginning. Just a clip, built for outrage, and a comment section full of opinions."

"Let's be clear about who we are," she wrote. "We are a pizza restaurant. Not a party venue, not a bakery, not a rental hall. We built our name on pizza — the kind the Jersey Shore is known for."

"We also are Jersey Strong! Protecting our customers, employees, reputation and brand is important," she wrote. "Every restaurant on this boardwalk has policies that exist for real reasons — food safety, liability, order in a kitchen running full speed on a summer night."

"Those policies aren't up for a public vote just because one moment of enforcing them got recorded," she wrote.

"We have persevered, one pie at a time, long before this video and long after it's forgotten. That's not going to change. Although we are considering a new tagline: We don't do cake. We do pizza," she wrote.

The video and her full response are below.

The video spread like wildfire — Vintage New Jersey has more than 500,000 followers spread across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X —and sparked a significant backlash.

Karcich had not responded to media requests for comment, and the voicemail at Joey Tomato's was full and not accepting messages Wednesday morning. The restaurant's Facebook page had been removed, and Yelp has placed a block on reviews for the restaurant because of a spike in negative reviews as a result of the video.

Some of the commentary on social media has been directed at the prices at Joey Tomato's; Jurkowski said the group bought four large pizzas with different toppings and five large drinks and paid about $250.

While Joey Tomato's had received the bulk of the blowback, there have been innocent bystanders caught up in the controversy. A South Carolina business has been inundated by negative reviews from people who indiscriminately searched for the place online. Jurkowski urged people to stop the posts.

On Tuesday, Jurkowski posted an update and said he too has been inundated with media requests and said he would not speak further on the matter.

"I'm still surprised how the situation unfolded," he said. "We just wanted to spend a day at the beach, boardwalk, rides arcades and get some pizza. We spent money at this place we just wanted to borrow a knife to cut the cake, and the response caught us completely off-guard."