Lately restaurants and retailers have either raised the wrath of consumers when they dumped on their employees or attempted to push their politics (think Papa John’s, Applebee’s; Chick-fil-A), or they’re getting the benefit of huge viral hugs when something they do right strikes a chord in the social media world: (think Costco, Trader Joe’s, even JCPenney when it stood by Ellen DeGeneres). Often the public heat on a topic starts with a tweet, a photo, or, say, the screenshot of a receipt that shows a retailer’s good heart and generosity. And that’s where our story begins:

Seth McClure, 30, is law school student with a wife, two kids, a brother, and two parents who recently endured, according to his account, the destruction of their home in a fire.

Where the Olive Garden gets involved:

McClure took his wife, 3-year-old daughter and brother out to dinner at a local Olive Garden, and when the restaurant manager came to the table to ask how their dinners were, McClure’s daughter chirped up that her grandpa’s house had just burned down. What followed was a receipt with a zero balance; the restaurant had comped the meal for the entire family:





The reason we know about this receipt is because McClure was reportedly so touched by the heartfelt gesture (Olive Garden’s claim “When you’re here, you’re family” must have felt like it came to life for the McClures!), he posted an anonymous Reddit entry about their generosity. The Huffington Post picked up the story off Reddit and ran their own “good news” piece, Olive Garden Receipt: Family Pays $0 After Restaurant Learns House Burned Down:

After asking for more details about the incident, the team at the restaurant decided to give the customers a pretty generous discount. When the family received their bill, they saw all their meals had been comped. The charge was $0. The man posted the receipt to Reddit, and news of the good deed quickly went viral. The Huffington Post reached out to Darden, the parent company of the Olive Garden, to find out more about how it all happened. “We are always looking for ways to surprise and delight our guests, and this was one of the ways the Olive Garden team in Vernon Hills, Ill., did that last weekend,” representative Tara Gray told HuffPost in an email.

What the Huffington Post didn’t mention, or maybe didn’t know at the time, was that the “viral” nature of the Reddit story had suddenly switched directions, going decidedly negative after readers smelled a PR stunt. According to an AOLJobs piece, when McClure opened up his Reddit page the next morning, he was blasted by commenters who were less than impressed, convinced the whole thing was a set-up to make the Olive Garden look good:

When McClure woke up Wednesday morning, he said, his Reddit inbox was filled with messages, some telling him that “he should get cancer,” and others calling him a “corporate shill.” His receipt had gone viral; as of Wednesday afternoon it had received almost 900,000 views and over 1,600 comments, many roundly praising Olive Garden for a random act of kindness, but others accusing McClure of being the agent in a PR stunt. A Reddit user going by the name iworkinadvertising, who claims to be a journalist covering advertising, said ad agencies will encourage employees to have active social media accounts, and then on occasion will call on those employees to post a positive story related to one of their clients. Tanek42 was just a fraud, he said, and his receipt “free advertising.” Skeptics also pointed out that the receipt in the photograph is perfectly framed by the Olive Garden logo, that all information identifying the specific Olive Garden restaurant is conveniently obscured, and that the user who posted the image became active on Reddit less than a month ago, and hasn’t responded to any of the controversy. In other words, they smell a rat. (Since then, McClure has posted dozens of replies to commenters.)

The assessment of some – viewing the incident from a more objective perspective – is that corporate generosity is so rare, there’s a knee-jerk reaction to suspect the authenticity of any example of it, particularly one that plays so successfully into the viral nature of online, social media postings. The head of corporate communications for the Olive Garden, Owen Dougherty, adamantly denied that the company had an insider post the story as a PR stunt (“It’s completely against our code of conduct…”), but there has been enough other backlash to this particular corporation that it’s not a stretch to imagine that tactic.

Remember their advertising campaign about how all its chefs go to Tuscany, Italy to learn the fine, authentic nuances of “real” Italian recipes? Turns out that was a PR smokescreen. From SlashFood’s piece, The Truth Behind The Olive Garden’s Tuscan Cooking School:

The [Olive Garden] manager, posting as FIDELIA079 [on Reddit], claims that he scored a lucky, all-expense-paid (except souvenirs) trip to the chain’s Tuscan “culinary institute” in 2007. It seems the Olive Garden doesn’t even own the place. They just book all the rooms at some hotel in the off-season, close the place to the public, and take over the restaurant. Sporadic “classes” lasted “maybe an hour here or there” where they would “talk about spices or fresh produce for a minute” before taking the group site-seeing for the day. Lots of drinking ensued. If it sounds like just a ploy to allow the ubiquitous strip-mall-Italian chain to claim that its staff is trained in the Old Country-apparently, it is.”The only time we saw the ‘chef’ was when she made a bolognese sauce while taking pictures with each of us to send to our local newspapers,” the anonymous ex-manager says. “They sent pre-written articles to our local newspaper with fake quotes from me and a group photo. Also, every year when they would run the promotion I was supposed to wear a special ‘chef’ coat and make conversation with guests who ordered the promotional meals.”

Which makes it just a tad harder to believe when company spokespeople indignantly claim they wouldn’t stoop so low as to “fake” a comped meal receipt for the hope of viral enthusiasm!

But, in fact, social media sites like Reddit, and the readers and contributors to that site and others, have gotten wise to that exact ploy; the notion of anyone, or any company, pushing too hard, and without authenticity, in hopes of setting a PR campaign on social media fire. Reddit, in particular, is sensitive about being a truly reader-driven content board, and will discontinue an account if they think someone is posting only their own content (see Reddit Bans The Atlantic, Businessweek In Anti-Spam Crusade). Yelp is another site that frowns mightily on businesses posted their own “good reviews,” employing a strenuous filter for any who might try (sometimes to the argument that authentic reviews get tainted as fakes when they’re not, to the detriment of the companies being reviewed).

The bottom line seems to be that you can’t fabricate honest virality. You can try, but in this democratized online culture, it’s those most active and aware who can either push your product to the heights or slam you so hard to the ground you’re dizzy for days.

As for the Olive Garden and Seth McClure’s receipt; spam fakery or a nice gesture by a chain restaurant? According to the AOLJobs story, he – and his receipt – are the real deal:

“I guess it was just unbelievable that a company would actually do something that was actually nice,” said McClure. But at least in this case Tanek42 is not a sneaky spambot of casual Italian dining, but truly a scholarship law student with two kids, a mortgage, and parent’s whose house just burned down — and who happened to have a heart-warming experience at Olive Garden. The best kind of free advertising there is. McClure isn’t so surprised that his post attracted critics. “I think it’s the Internet, right. It goes at light speed,” he said. “You’ve got people on both sides, and there are always skeptics. In the end, you just hope the truth comes out.”

Of course, it’s possible the skeptics still uncertain are those stuck on the fact that the Olive Garden’s endless bread sticks are as close to “real bread” as a loaf of Wonder, and that “Tuscan cooking” is not much more than a photo op. But still… it looks like Seth McClure did get a free meal. And that we can all applaud.

Follow Lorraine Devon Wilke on Twitter, Facebook and Rock+Paper+Music; for her archive at Addicting info click here; details and links to her other work: www.lorrainedevonwilke.com.