The owners of Taste of Italy in Latham started and then appear to have deleted a GoFundMe page soliciting donations to “Help Our Family and Small Businesses Recover.”
The GoFundMe was launched Saturday. The move came about a month after Taste of Italy co-owner Alyssa Cappello made an Islamophobic comment — using the restaurant’s Facebook account — about Harbe Nagi, a 7-year-old boy with autism who went missing in Menands. Nagi was later found dead in a swimming pool.
WAMC accessed the Cappellos’ GoFundMe page on Monday, but by Monday afternoon the page URL led to a “Fundraiser not found” notice.
The comment, which Cappello admitted to making in the since-deleted GoFundMe, went viral and inspired weeks of protests outside Taste of Italy and other businesses owned by the Cappellos.
“After I made a social media comment expressing my fears about the future and Islam’s role in society, my words caused hurt and offense to many people. I regret that my comment caused pain,” Alyssa Cappello said in the GoFundMe post. “While I accept responsibility for what I said, I never imagined the devastating impact that would follow.”
Cappello wrote that she, co-owner Frank Cappello and their children have “endured weeks of harassment, protests, online attacks, and thousands of hateful messages and death threats,” some of which, she said, were directed at her children.
Funds raised would’ve been used to keep their businesses open, pay for legal assistance, improve physical and digital security for their businesses, and possibly to put their children in a private school that would be able “to better protect them.”
Taste of Italy owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes, according to New York state records.
“The impact on our businesses has been overwhelming,” Cappello wrote. “Revenue has fallen by more than 60%, and we’ve lost more than half of our employees. Those who remain have seen their hours and tips drastically reduced, while rent, payroll, taxes, loans, and other bills continue to come due.”
Before the posting was deleted on Monday afternoon, the Cappellos had raised $335 toward their $24,000 goal.
Protesters have picketed outside of Taste of Italy and other businesses owned by the Capellos since Alyssa Cappello’s Facebook comment. The protests, organized by the activist collective Indivisible Albany, have been billed as “rallies against racism.”
“I think at this point they need to probably get rid of whatever, you know, businesses that they’re in, rethink where they are in the Capital Region, rethink what their messaging wants to be, the brand that they want,” said Heather Martin, who has attended several Taste of Italy protests, during a rally outside of the Cappellos’ latest business venture,
Grazie Italian Kitchen in Albany. “And maybe later on, they can start over.”
Grazie was supposed to open on July 15, but that date was postponed indefinitely.
Indivisible Albany also sent a letter to the New York State Liquor Authority, asking the body to revoke the Cappellos’ liquor license. They cited Alyssa Cappello’s comments, unpaid back taxes and an ongoing defamation case brought against the Cappellos by food blogger 518 Foodie.
The State Liquor Authority did not respond to a request for comment.
