Fact Check

Restaurant Staff Walks Out When Obamas Walk In

An article reporting that the staff at a restaurant in Hawaii walked out in protest over President Obama's visit was fake news.

Published Dec. 19, 2016

 (Wikipedia)
Image Via Wikipedia
Claim:
The staff at a restaurant in Hawaii walked out in protest over President Obama's visit.

On 18 December 2016, the DCPosts.com web site published an article reporting that the staff at a restaurant in Hawaii (where the First Family was vacationing) walked out in protest over President Obama's visit:

The Obama family decided to go out for Breakfast Sunday morning only to have their hopes shattered by the Patriots who worked at the restaurant they went to. The owners of the Komonawannafeedya restaurant in Maui encouraged the employees to walk out when the Obamas made their typical Sunday morning stop while vacationing in Hawaii to show their support for incoming President Donald Trump.

The owners consider themselves patriots and say they used to enjoy the free publicity of the Obama visits when they were in town but could no longer keep up the facade that they were happy with their president.

hawaii breakfast

There was no truth to the above-quoted article. DCPosts.com traffics in fake news, and although the site does not carry a readily available disclaimer, several other clues indicate that this article is not on the level.

The restaurant's name ("Komonawannafeedya") could be a humorous attempt to mimic the Hawaiian language (Come on, I want to feed you), but we found no record of a restaurant bearing that name in Hawaii. Additionally, the photograph included with the article, which supposedly showed the "breakfast Obama could have had if he were welcome at the restaurant," wasn't taken at the fictional Komonawannafeedya restaurant but rather was snapped by James Rubio in 2008 at Hawaiian Style Cafe in Waimea. And, of course, no other news outlet reported on this item, which would have been major story had it actually occurred.

DCPosts.com is simply a rebranded version of Departed.co, a web site with a history of publishing baseless and inaccurate articles.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.