DAN QUAGLIANA
Managing Editor
Warning: This article contains strong language.
About three weeks ago, a Facebook post by a Fredonia community member was shared on the social media platform YikYak that detailed a health concern at Lena’s Pizza, Subs & Wings, a popular eatery in downtown Fredonia.
The post explained how a friend who was employed at Lena’s told them that, “[F]or the last month or more at my job (restaurant) we’ve been smelling something nasty and we finally realized about 2-3 weeks ago that it was coming from the basement … My coworker goes to check it out… and this is what she finds today … That is, in fact, shit. Literal human feces, and not anything rotten food[-]related.”
The post claims that “…our manager has known and has been lying to us for nearly a month. He’s continued to have the restaurant open the entire time, with shit coming up through the vents.”
The Leader reached out to Lena’s, and they offered an explanation.
“It was a miscommunication of what it was,” the manager at Lena’s said. “It wasn’t what they posted about. We were open through the whole process. The health department came down — it was water and grease. They checked it out themselves.”
The original post on YikYak said that the “Maintenance man says it’s just the grease trap and what we’re smelling is rotten food. SO, now, 3 weeks later, Eddy [who the post names as the manager] and the maintenance guy have done nothing to fix it… and my coworkers cannot breathe because it’s unbearable.”
But Lena’s manager explained the situation as, “It was the grease trap … because it’s 20 years old, it was not working properly. It was backed up, so we had to order a [replacement], and then it solved the whole problem.”
They further explained that they snaked out and cleaned all their sewage lines and cleaned up the building, so the “entire thing was taken care of.”
Students on campus, however, are still weary about returning to eat at Lena’s. One student responded “f*ck no” in response to a post on YikYak asking if students thought it was safe to eat there.
Lena’s said the Chautauqua County Health Department came down and confirmed that the building was only affected by water and grease. They said that the establishment could stay open as it was cleaned.
The establishment had ordered a new grease trap prior to the YikYak post and the concern around it, but, “It just took time to get in because it’s not something you could just get from the store. They had to ship it in from somewhere else,” stated the manager.
The manager of Lena’s further said that there was a decrease in service for “a brief period, I would say about two weeks.” Service volume has since returned to normal.
