Not every restaurant can be The Red Hen.

A restaurant in Canada fired its manager for refusing to serve a patron unless he removed his “Make America Great Again” hat.

In a statement, Sequoia Company of Restaurants, which owns the Teahouse in Vancouver said it fired the manager for violating its “philosophy of tolerance.”

But newly sacked former manager Darin Hodge says he has no regrets about the incident or his subsequent firing, saying “As a person with a strong moral backbone, I had to take a stand against this guest’s choice of headwear while in my former place of work.”


According to The Hill newspaper, the restaurant was hit with a barrage of negative reviews on Yelp. Trump supporters accused the restaurant of discrimination against conservatives, but they weren’t the only ones with something to say. Many voiced support for the manager, and slammed the restaurant for his firing.

The incident is reminiscent of one last week in Lexington, Virginia, where White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was denied service at The Red Hen restaurant. The owner of that establishment said she declined to serve Sander out of “moral conviction” over the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

This set off a week of debate over “civility” and whether public shaming of Trump officials is acceptable. Some tried to draw a comparison between what happened to Sanders and the recent Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision, though perhaps such comparisons didn’t quite pass the legal test.

The president himself even targeted The Red Hen in a tweet, which led to increased scrutiny. Unfortunately for other establishments bearing the same name, this meant a week of nasty calls, tweets, and threats despite having no connection to the restaurant in Lexington.