Hellmann’s is vowing to help a Spanish café owner after his restaurant was damaged by a customer.
The popular mayonnaise brand issued a statement on its Instagram offering to pay for the café repairs. The post came weeks after a customer allegedly started a fire at Cafetería Las Postas in Seville, Spain, simply because he didn’t get mayonnaise with his order.
“Cafeteria Las Postas: We’re sorry we weren’t there. From now on, you can count on us,” the post on Hellman’s Spain’s Instagram account, which was translated from Spanish to English via Google Translate and shared earlier this month, reads. “Let us take care of the repairs and make sure your sandwiches never run out of mayonnaise again.”
The restaurant expressed its gratitude in the comments, responding: “Thank you very much @hellmanns_spain!! It’s a pleasure to receive your help!”
On August 20, Cafetería Las Postas shared a video on Instagram of the restaurant being set on fire, during the business’s operating hours, with staff at work.
“This afternoon we suffered an attack, where a ‘customer’ who was passing through our cafe asked us for a couple of sachets of mayonnaise for his sandwich,” the caption read. “When we told him we didn’t have any, he went to the gas station to buy a bottle of gasoline, entered the premises, and set fire to.”
The business also noted that neither customers nor employees were hurt by the fire. Only material belongings had significant damage.
However, the cafe said it was uploading this video “so that these types of people are punished and removed from our society immediately, and that the full weight of the law falls on them.”
Café owner José Antonio Caballero explained that the customer set the restaurant counter on fire after being told a second time, “No mayonnaise, no ketchup.” The customer had originally ordered two sandwiches and two beers before asking for the mayonnaise.
“Imagine the fire that started,” he explained to Spanish publication El Economista, as reported by Euro Weekly News. “There were children in front of him, people spending the afternoon. It was tremendous.”
Caballero noted that after the fire, the damages are expected to cost between €7,000 and €10,000, which is about $8,251 to $11,787.
According to Euro Weekly News, the customer who started the fire suffered burns, before he was restrained by bystanders at the café and arrested. The Court of First Instance of Utrera, a civil court in Seville, ordered him into custody without bail.
