Friends Flee Restaurant Without Paying, Then Send The Owner A Letter

Running a restaurant is no easy task. Despite this, Apollo always took a lot of pride in his Middlesbrough-based restaurant Kilimandjaro. This is one owner who always treated his staff with respect and that also applied to his customers. However, when three guys from out of town showed up for some chicken, they ended up fleeing the restaurant without paying.  Apollo was angry by their behavior, and later received a letter from them…

For soccer fans who went to watch Middlesbrough F.C. play during the weekend, Kilimandjaro was a popular place to go for some food after the game. One of its trademark dishes was the Waka Waka Chicken. Despite the busy weekends, Apollo and the team were especially taken aback when three guys from out of town showed up, and then left without paying…

For the first few hours of that busy weekend shift, everything seemed normal for Apollo and his Kilimandjaro team. Customers were coming in their droves and service was like clockwork that day. Truth be told, Apollo wasn’t even in. He was enjoying himself with his family, and completely oblivious to the ongoings of his restaurant. Little did he know that something completely unexpected was about to go down and he’d be receiving a pretty awkward phone call from the manager…

Midway through that busy weekend shift, three guys walked through the restaurant’s doors and were clearly interested in sitting down and eating some food. There’s a good chance that they were supporters of the away team and were from out of town. At least, the staff could tell that their accents were a little different. It didn’t take long before a waiter attended to their needs and took their orders. Everything seemed to be going according to plan…

It’s always a risk just walking into a restaurant you’re unfamiliar with and placing an order. However, the three friends were glad they had chosen Kilimandjaro. Two of the friends enjoyed the Waka Waka Chicken with cheese while the other had Waka Waka Chicken without cheese. Based on the lack of conversation, the staff could tell that these three guys were loving every bite. Fast-forward half an hour later, and the three friends were ready to get the check…

One of the things that the friends couldn’t get over was the sauce that they saw on the table they were eating at. Upon first glance, they noticed that the logo and colors of the bottle resembled sauce from another famous chicken restaurant – Nando’s. However, as soon as they tasted it, they noticed that it very much had a unique flavor and just like that, they carried on enjoying their delicious meal. Now it was time to pay…

The three friends were ready to pay for their food. In total, the food came to £35, which is the equivalent of about $43. As the waiter proceeded to their table, Tom, Alex, and Harry reached out for their credit cards and handed them over. But they weren’t prepared at all when the waiter told them that they only take cash. The waiter then went to take orders from another table. However, the three friends had other plans…

As the waiter returned to their table to receive their cash payment, they were shocked to see that the table was empty. It turns out that Tom, Alex, and Harry had simply got up from their table and fled the restaurant. They had failed to pay for their food and just like that, they never returned. Naturally, the waiter had no choice but to call up Apollo and needless to say, he was not happy…

As soon as the waiter explained to Apollo what had happened, he was completely confused. He didn’t understand how in this day and age, a group of friends could just go into a restaurant, place their orders, eat the food and then walk away without paying. The truth is that Apollo has been on a long journey over the course of his life and his seen a lot of twists and turns. But this was one of the craziest ones yet…

In an interview with Gazette Live, Apollo explained that his country of birth, Burkina Faso, literally translates into “The Land of Honest People.” Having spent his formative years in the West African country, Apollo has always placed huge importance on the virtue of honesty and took that value with him when he moved to the United Kingdom years ago. As far as Apollo was concerned, he had no other choice but to take some desperate measures…

Due to his reputation as an honest man, Apollo had strong feelings about what had happened at his restaurant. In fact, he admitted to having lost some of his faith in humanity after the incident. Therefore, in order to ensure that this didn’t happen again, he advised his staff members that if this sort of thing ever happened again, that they should make sure that the customers stay until they pay. Despite feeling bitter, Apollo held onto hope that the customers would return…

A couple of days passed, and there was still no sign that the three guys would ever return to pay for their food. Apollo made sure to be at the restaurant at all times in case Tom, Alex, and Harry ever returned. The owner’s hopes of them returning got smaller with each passing day. However, while conducting some business in his office, Apollo was surprised to see one of his staff run in and present him something…

As the waiter ran in, he explained to Apollo that he had a letter for him that he needed to read immediately. It was clear that the staff member had already looked at the contents of the letter and was desperate for Apollo to see what was inside. Intrigued by what it could be, the owner wasted no time and snatched the envelope from his waiter’s hands. However, as soon as he opened up the envelope, he was blown away by what fell out of it…

As he opened the envelope, Apollo was shocked to find £40 (approximately $50) in notes fall out onto his desk. “We open the envelope, there’s some money,” the owner told Gazette Live. It soon became clear that the money had been sent by Tom, Alex, and Harry – the three guys who had fled the restaurant just a few days beforehand. Shocked by what he had received, Apollo was in for another surprise when he discovered a letter inside the envelope…

From the moment he started reading the letter, it was clear to Apollo that all three of the friends were sincerely sorry for having left the restaurant without paying for their food. “It is my companions’ and [my] sincerest apologies…we forgot to pay our bill,” one of them wrote. “It was very unlike us, which is why we are very remorseful.” Despite this, Apollo wasn’t convinced that they were being genuine. Then they went on to explain what had happened that day…

Despite giving no indication that they were planning on paying for their food that day, the three friends reassured Apollo that they genuinely wanted to. They just didn’t have any cash on them. They explained that they wanted to pay by card, but were eventually told that the restaurant only accepts cash payment. This explained why they went out of the restaurant without notice. They wanted to get some cash. However, things didn’t go exactly according to plan…

After being told by the waiter that the restaurant doesn’t take cards, the three friends decided to rush out of the restaurant and look for the closest ATM machine. They even claimed to have agreed with a member of staff to go out and get cash from a machine and come back as quickly as possible. “We then exited Kilimanjaros to embark on a search,” they wrote. Although they looked all over for one, they were forced to focus their attentions elsewhere…

Despite spending the next half an hour looking for an ATM, the three friends realized that the last train back home was about to depart. “This diverted our attention away from finding an A.T.M. machine and led to us running down to the train station and just making our train,” they wrote. It was only then that the group realized they had forgotten to pay the check. By that time they were miles away from Middlesbrough, and it was too late…

The fact that they lived in another part of the country also explained why they were writing a letter to Apollo and not coming all the way back to the restaurant to pay him in person. Apparently, because they weren’t from Middlesbrough, they wouldn’t be able to come back to the restaurant and apologize the way they’d hope to. They weren’t sure when they’d be returning to Kilamandjaro and wanted to pay them as soon as possible…

While it was humbling for Apollo to read the group’s explanation, that wasn’t all they shared with him. Tom, Alex, and Harry also explained to him that they enjoyed their time at Kilimandjaro so much, they wanted to give the restaurant a five-star review. They claimed that they would get on TripAdvisor as soon as possible and write something extremely favorable. As soon as he finished reading the letter and placed it on his desk, he wasn’t sure how to react…

In Apollo’s words, he was “absolutely gobsmacked” after reading the letter. “It was really, really surprising [and] shocking when we first received the letter,” he said. As far as he was concerned, the owner couldn’t believe that people still do incredible things like this. “I thought those kinds of people had disappeared from the planet,” he said. And although Apollo hails from the “Land of Honest People,” he is now convinced that there are honest people everywhere.

Although the letter restored Apollo’s faith in humanity, there is no indication that the three friends ever returned to Kilimandjaro to meet him in person. However, it appears that they were true to their word and did indeed write a five-star review on TripAdvisor. “I would highly recommend to anyone in the area and would definitely return if I ever found myself in Middlesbrough again,” they wrote. However, they would’ve been wasting their time had they traveled back for some Waka Waka chicken…

It appears that Tom, Alex and Harry’s long trip back to Middlesbrough would have been futile. This is because since what happened, Apollo’s restaurant has permanently closed down. It’s unclear why the restaurant is no longer open, but it appears that other branches across the country are still going strong. At any rate, Apollo seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from that heartwarming letter and his life has only been getting better and better…

There is no denying that Apollo must have felt dejected when he had no choice but to close down his restaurant. However, it seems like it didn’t take too long before the businessman got back out there. Just days after he got the bad news, Apollo was busy posting photos online of him and his family. In one of the photos, he could be seen driving his car and as a caption, he wrote two simple words: “Feeling blessed.”

Although Tom, Alex, and Harry won’t be able to go back to Apollo’s restaurant to thank him in person, they will be glad to hear that he is happy and doing very well for himself. Not only has he made his own sauce, but the businessman is also the chairman of soccer team Thornaby FC. Through his recent business endeavors, Apollo is now in touch with famous soccer players. One thing’s for sure, the future certainly looks bright for this ambitious man.

At the end of the day, the main reason that Apollo is such an ambitious businessman is that he wants to make sure that his family has everything they need. Not only that, but he wants his partner and kids to be extremely happy and to inspire his children to grow up to be as ambitious as him. After hearing stories like this one, we have no doubt they will grow up to follow in their father’s footsteps.