One year later: Red Hen incident had little effect on Lexington tourism

[TexasTowelie]

LEXINGTON — One year ago Saturday, the owner of The Red Hen in Lexington asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to leave her restaurant. News of the incident spread across the country within minutes after Sanders tweeted about what happened. Protesters traveled to the 7,000-person city and gathered outside the restaurant with signs, chants and in one case, chicken poop.

The restaurant’s phone line was hacked, fake Yelp reviews caused its rates to plummet and dozens of people made fake reservations. The Red Hen closed for 10 days as national media converged on Lexington. President Donald Trump joined in on Twitter to call the restaurant dirty.

The city’s director of marketing, Patty Williams, said the tourism office received thousands of letters and phone calls after the incident , and many of them were from people who said they would never visit the area again.

But according to a survey conducted by the region’s tourism office and the city’s tax records, the incident seems to have had little effect on Lexington.

Read more:https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/state/one-year-later-red-hen-incident-had-little-effect-on/article_d6b9a5ce-3c2f-5d27-9c55-a3f9e1692844.html
(Charlottesville Daily Progress)

[mr_lebowski]

1. And the restaurant is still open and doing fine, yeah?

I love it when we win ...

[TexasTowelie]

2. According to this article from about one month ago it was great for business.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/05/15/red-hen-owner-kicking-out-sarah-sanders-great-virginia-business/3676661002/

The charitable donations to the local food shelter were also a blessing.

[mr_lebowski]

3. Thanks TT ... and can I also say I appreciate your consistently clean URL posting

Straight to the document, without any extraneous post-question-mark garbage in them?

Some of us anal-retentives appreciate that

[TexasTowelie]

4. I try to clean up the code as much as possible.

I did a lot of desktop publishing during my career so I hate wasting those extra pixels. I also try to indicate the publication if it isn't obvious from the URL since there is always that nagging doubt as to whether the site being clicked is safe. I'll sometimes bungle things if I have too many tabs open, but I'm satisfied with my accuracy rate considering that I'm frequently drinking an alcoholic beverage or returning from a smoke break.

It's also kind of nice to know that a database is being built on the local stories in case someone needs to refer to them for some reason. When I first joined DU, I was very disappointed with how little news there was in the Texas Group. I expanded into the adjacent states and then it continued from there to the remaining states.

[mr_lebowski]

5. I pretty much drink and vape constantly when I'm on DU ...

Oh, and most other times, unless I'm at work, sadly. Nobody should be surprised if I'm suddenly ... not here anymore ... lol.

Anyways, thanks again for what ya do!