Amy’s Baking Company owners respond to critics after contract leak
Jul 9, 2013, 4:11 PM | Updated: 4:11 pm
PHOENIX – Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, owners of the infamous Amy’s Baking Company restaurant responded to their critics and the rest of the world after the company’s contract got leaked online less than two weeks ago.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Mail, the couple talks about everything from appearing on Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” to a potential deportation of Amy’s husband to Israel for drug trafficking charges.
The Arizona-based couple admitted they made it big after appearing on “Kitchen Nightmares” and having Ramsay walk out on them, something he had never done before on the show.
Blamed for stealing their servers’ tips, having low-quality food and for selecting customers was more than enough to create a social-media outcry that generated death threats and had them fearing for their lives.
The couple have been forced to call the police and make reports to the FBI, adding: ‘Over the past couple of months, we’ve gone from being completely unknown to having people call us at 3am saying they’re going to break into our house with a rifle, rape me and kill my husband.
But matters got worse for the French-Italian bistro located in Scottsdale after a “mutually-binding” contract got leaked online, which stated among other things that employees could not work within a 50-mile radius of a competitor, and that their tips belonged to the owners.
‘Since the show, we recognise the outcry and now we’re giving the servers their tips. It would still work out in their favour to be be paid hourly, but now they’re guaranteed to make a minimum of $7.80 an hour and we make sure they go home with more than that, 100 per cent.’
Eventually after numerous Yelp! reviews came to light, Redditors got a few responses back via the company’s Facebook page with status updates that said the cakes could be bought at Wal-Mart and that Amy Bouzalgo was Wonderwoman.
The couple says they did not post those messages.
Amy alleges they discovered a middle-school student had hacked their Facebook account – but claims that Facebook chiefs have not got in touch with them despite making complaints to the social network.
As if that wasn’t enough, Samy Bouzalgo is now facing deportation after alleged drug trafficking charges sent him to prison in both Germany and France for 15 years.
‘We’ve had attorneys review his case and if the case was in America he would never have been arrested – he was a victim of circumstances and surrounded by the wrong people.
The media exposure has not only attracted hate and anger over the company, according to Amy. She says tourists visiting the state are flocking to the restaurant to take pictures with them, and the couple have apparently found a new way to make revenue.
We’re printing T-shirts that say ‘I survived Amy’s Baking Company’, ‘Here’s your pizza, go f**k yourself”, ‘I’m the Gangster, and’ I speak Feline, MEOW!!’ We’re making cherry lemonade out of lemons. Never in my life would I have thought the show would launch us into this kind of stratosphere.
Amy’s Baking Company has recently been in talks with several networks to launch their own reality TV show. Details of what the show will be about remain unknown.
