The company that owns Applebee's, DineEquity Inc., said it would retrain workers nationwide after an employee at a suburban Detroit location accidentally served a margarita to a toddler.
The boy's mother, Taylor Dill-Reese had ordered her 15-month-old son Dominick an apple juice from an Applebee's in Madison Heights, Michigan. According to the Detroit News, She gave the server a sippie-cup for the juice, which the server mistakenly filled with a margarita mixture. Police believe the bottle was mislabeled.
Police found Dominick's blood alcohol level to be 0.10, above the legal limit for motorists in Michigan. And while the child is fully recovered now, doctors told his mother that, if he had finished the cup, he could have died.
Applebee's spokeswoman Melissa Racer issued a statement of apology Tuesday, saying "we want to express how thankful we are that the child involved in the incident...was not seriously injured as a result of accidentally receiving the wrong beverage. We also want to apologize to his parents, for the stress and worry this caused them."
According to the Detroit News, this is not the first time something like this has happened. At least three similar reports, dating back to 2006, have been reported at Applebee's restaurants in the United States.
In response to these incidents, Applebee's will retrain all workers to serve apple juice to children only from single-serve containers at the table and would "retrain all severs on our beverage pouring policy, emphasizing that non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages must be stored in completely separate and identified containers."
Applebee's Retrains Workers After Margarita Mishap
Apr 12, 2011, 08:06 by John Steele