As the coronavirus quarantine continues to hit restaurants hard by forcing them to only sell takeout and delivery, one restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina is facing criticism for allegedly selling $2 frozen pizzas for $18 and passing them off as house-made.
According to the The Post and Courier, Coquin advertises the pizza as “gourmet Roman-style thin crust pizza, with house made marinara sauce and whole milk mozzarella.” They charge $18 for a cheese pie and $20 for one with toppings — a 700 percent markup, if they are, in fact, frozen pies.
Chef and owner Chip Grimalda told the paper that the restaurant has sold about 20 pizzas a day. “Everyone who’s ordered it has given us rave reviews,” he said. “Right now, we’re still getting (the needed) ingredients in: That may change in the future, but we’re just trying to, you know, make it through to the next week.”
However, The Post and Courier reports having witnessed Grimalda receive a pizza order on Tuesday, “go from the restaurant to his nearby apartment, then leave on a delivery run with corrugated cardboard boxes that read, ‘Fresh Pizza, Oven Baked.’” The publication also found four-pack boxes of Kirkland Signature Cheese Pizza with Breadcrumb Crusts inside the restaurant’s trash cans.
When asked if he was passing off frozen pizzas as homemade and selling them for marked-up prices, Grimalda said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s definitely not Costco, and that’s all I have to say.”
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