After a pop-up outdoor market in Fort Worth disinvited a vendor because of her sexual orientation, a completely unrelated business has been thrust into full damage control mode.
Roots Market has come under fire after excluding the vendor from its outdoor market this past weekend.
For those of you who live and work near the KRLD studios, the name Roots Market might ring a bell, as there happens to be a brick-and-mortar store across the freeway that goes by that same name.
It specializes in juices and plant-based meals and also has nothing to do with the recent controversy.
"I woke up Friday morning to a plethora of Google reviews and Yelp reviews, all one-star, saying that I hated gay people (and) I hated the LGBTQ community," says Brent Rodgers, founder, and CEO of Roots Market & Juicery which is headquartered in Atlanta and has two locations in Dallas.
Ever since then, his life has been turned upside-down.
"I went to damage control, and I started replying to these reviews," says Rodgers. "I contacted Yelp (and) I contacted Google. Google finally got back to me and said, 'All these reviews are staying. We believe them to be true.'"
He then started reaching out to people leaving the angry reviews to set the record straight that they had the wrong company, and some of them realized the error of their ways.
"When I did reply to them saying, 'Hey, I'm an openly gay person. This is not my business. You have the wrong person,' they were like, 'Oh my god, I'm really sorry,' and they corrected it and took it off," says Rodgers.
Rodgers owns the trademark for Roots Market and says he has sent the organizer of the Fort Worth outdoor market a cease-and-desist letter.
But constantly fighting trademark infringement is something that's beyond his financial means.
"I'm a small business," notes Rodgers. "I can't afford $50,000 a month and legal bills, so I am not able to fight each one of them."
Related
Related
