Tomball barbecue restaurant 2 Guys 1 Pit says it was scammed out of $350

A Houston-area barbecue joint thought they were helping a Girl Scout troop in need. Instead, they’re now warning others of a betrayal worth hundreds of dollars.

2 Guys 1 Pit in Tomball revealed what had happened to them on social media Wednesday. Someone had ordered $350 worth of food, and the owners discovered later that the credit card used was somebody else’s. 

“We are a small business. We do not have the bandwidth to be stolen from and honestly it’s not right to do so in the name of such a wonderful organization like the Girl Scouts either…,” 2 Guys 1 Pit wrote.

2 Guys 1 Pit owner Michelle Rodriguez said it all went down during Labor Day weekend, typically one of the busiest times of the year.

2 Guys 1 Pit is located at 11711 Spring Cypress Rd. (Courtesy of 2 Guys 1 Pit)

“We all felt betrayed, especially because she used the girl scouts as an excuse,” Rodriguez said.

Typically, 2 Guys 1 Pit requires a 48 hours’ notice for large group orders. But when a woman called the restaurant the Sunday before Labor Day in a panic for a girl scout group’s event, Rodriguez said she made an exception.

‘She gave me the sob story about the girls scouts’

“She said that she had 15-16 Girl Scouts at an event and they were waiting for the caterer that they had ordered all the food for, and he never showed up. He was an hour late, and they just found out that he’d been in an accident, and was there anything that we could do to help possibly get some food, if they wanted to come pick it up,” Rodriguez said.

“Well, you know, because it’s the day before Labor Day, we were slammed and busy and I said, ‘Well, let me, let me see what we can do..'” 

The restaurant scrambled and cobbled together $350 worth of brisket, turkey, chicken and sides. 

For pick-up orders over $100, the restaurant requires a credit card as payment. When Rodriguez explained the policy, the woman asked whether they would accept a check. Rodriguez said they could not. Rodriguez received the credit card information over the phone and processed the payment with no problem.

The food was picked up an hour and a half later, and Rodriguez’ team carried on with business as usual. Two days later, someone called the restaurant, asking about a charge on his credit card to a restaurant he’d never heard of.

“We’ve never had this happen. Not somebody using a credit card over the phone and had stolen the card, the number, but she didn’t physically have the card,” Rodriguez said.

“And then to tell me that the delivery driver had been in a wreck, who was supposed to deliver the food…and I’m thinking in my mind, I’m thinking of these little girls, Girl Scouts waiting for food, and it just irritated me when I found out. I was livid.”

They believe the credit card’s owner is planning to dispute the charge. For Rodriguez and her husband, the stolen order was a “big hit” to 2 Guys 1 Pit.

“For us, that’s a huge loss because brisket right now is so expensive and our vendor, during the holidays, raised our brisket prices up by 10 cents,” Rodriguez said. 

“They do it every year during the holidays. It’s like gas prices going up, food costs goes up, everything goes up, and we don’t pass that when they do it on Labor Day or or any holiday. We don’t pass that along. We eat that cost as a business because we’re not going to change our prices … We’re just not going to do that to our customers”

Rodriguez said they know who did it and hope that they will come forward and pay up-especially since she’s not hopeful to get assistance from local Harris County Sheriff’s deputies.

“This is minor to them. They don’t care. They didn’t listen when we got robbed and they took a whole safe with over $4000 in it. I heard from a detective and that was it, never heard another word…I’m not even going to mess with it,” Rodriguez said.

In the meantime, Rodriguez hopes the social media post will draw enough attention that someone will come forward with information.

“I’m hoping, if nothing, that somebody will at least post her name on there that saw or knows her and then we can call the police and maybe they’ll do something about it,” Rodriguez said. “People have got to learn that they can’t get away with stuff like this nowadays, that they’ll get caught, and I hope she gets caught because I can promise you this is not the first time she’s done it.”

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This article originally published at Tomball barbecue restaurant 2 Guys 1 Pit says it was scammed out of $350.