The Springfield Store and Café has garnered infamy over the last week regarding a myriad of poor online reviews. Restaurant owners Karyn and Donald Cullingford, have made headlines for the amount and consistency of poor reviews online. Karyn has been called ‘the rudest woman in New Zealand’, and diners are advising other travellers to ‘do yourself a favour, and keep driving’. However, hanging upon the walls of the café are several accolades, for excellence in pie-craft.
What is going on here? Canterbury’s usually quiet town has doubled in the number of tourist attractions—the giant doughnut (a homage to Homer Simpson and his love of doughnuts), and now, ‘The F*** Off Café’.
There has been a lot of media attention converging on the café, so much so that the owners have apparently removed themselves from the café for the time being. While there is still speculation as to the future of the restaurant, there are some that are sympathetic to the pair, saying that perhaps this amount of negative attention is unwarranted. Inversely, there is a lot of support for those criticising the café, saying that a café ostracising this many people shouldn’t continue to operate.
