Recently, a chic New York restaurant and coffee shop, known for often having a line of eager customers out the door, went viral without even trying — and for all the wrong reasons. Corey Kiser, a barista in Manhattan, took to TikTok a few weeks ago, posting about the food safety violations he’d seen at his place of work, Fellini Coffee and Cucina in the West Village. The video got millions of views and the attention of several media outlets but allegedly cost Corey his job.
Fellini has three locations in Manhattan and has garnered attention for its photogenic design, drinks, and food. The coffee shop and its sister restaurant (the Cucina) look like something out of an Italian film from the 1960s, with dark wood interiors, sleek espresso machines, and marble countertops.
The company has an online presence to match, consistently posting images of Hollywood stars like Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Aubrey Hepburn paired with photos of the coffee bar to its Instagram. Even the company’s name, “Fellini,” references the last name of famed Italian director Federico Fellini, whose decadent film is referenced on the restaurant’s website: “Experience La Dolce Vita at Fellini.”
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In Corey’s viral video, the (now-former) Fellini employee described the restaurant kitchen as “sickening.” He also claimed that “all [the management] care about is show and Instagram” and that food is prepared on top of trash cans. He continued, alleging that “raw chicken is stored overnight at over 50 degrees. Someone’s about to get seriously ill.”
“I’m looking out for you guys,” he added. “I hope I don’t lose my job.” Just two days later, he updated his followers: The coffee shop had let him go. Corey told TikTok users, “I no longer work at Fellini,” continuing by sharing that the restaurant’s owner asked him to leave immediately. Corey was allegedly told that he “didn’t have to finish [his] shift if [he] didn’t want to take the video down.”
When speaking with Corey about the video and what prompted him to take his grievances to social media, he told BuzzFeed that he spoke to management at his job about his concerns before reporting Fellini to NYC health officials. He claimed: “When I initially filed an anonymous report with 311, they told me I could check my case number in literally 37 days to see. So, that’s sort of what prompted my TikTok. I thought, if this walk-in freezer is 54 degrees, and you know, how many people could come in that could potentially get sick.”
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By no means new to the restaurant scene, Corey has spent his entire career in the restaurant world in Tennessee, Missouri, and now New York. “I have worked a couple of jobs that really set the bar high early on in my career regarding cleanliness and standard,” he shared. “And, yeah, all the cafes that I have worked in New York have actually been pretty, pretty responsive when it comes to storing food and refrigerating things the right way.” He had only worked at Fellini Coffee for a few months when he made his now-viral TikTok.
Prior to making the video, Corey said he had voiced concerns about how the kitchen handled food, including management. He recalled: “I posted internally to Fellini’s WhatsApp channel about the walk-in [refrigerator] temperatures being in the mid-40s. About two weeks passed, and all of my voiced concerns were just ignored. The temperatures climbed higher and higher.” According to commercial kitchen equipment servicers, a walk-in refrigerator should hold food between 35°F and 38°F.
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Thousands of viewers chimed in on Corey’s claims in the comments:
New York-based TikTok creator, Rachel in a Real Way, posted her own PSA-style video after seeing a line outside Fellini even on the heels of Corey’s video going viral. “There are people waiting in the Fellini line for coffee right now, even though one of the people who worked there posted about how they prepared food on trash cans…” she says. “These people don’t know because they don’t have TikTok. Yikes.” That video has over 2.6 million views.
Another New Yorker, Cam, aka @bravois4geminis on TikTok, filmed a busy night at Fellini days after Corey had posted his video.
She captioned the video “major tea” with a hand on her mouth as she walked by unsuspecting diners.
Corey said that at the coffee shop and Cucina, “There’s an emphasis on that virality, on having pleasant aesthetics. I think if that is the core of what you’re after, or if you can’t think about the business aside from whether or not you’re getting likes on Instagram, you know, I think those are questionable priorities.”
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“It’s a very, very unstable sort of place to work,” Corey told BuzzFeed, explaining how staff were hired and dismissed, or quit, in what seemed like a revolving door of employment. “After I was fired, everybody was fed up, and most of everybody left immediately,” he claimed. “Basically, they quit.”
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Corey shared the fallout from his viral moment to his TikTok. Health officials inspected the West Village Fellini location three days after his initial video was uploaded on Nov. 6.
The health department uses a point system to assess food safety standards being met. According to NYC’s health inspection database, sanitary violations issued during the visit to Fellini’s coffee shop amounted to 56 points for issues like the potential presence of filth flies and “improperly constructed, placed, or maintained” containers and equipment, among other food safety violations.
Each violation contributes to the inspection’s point count. For example: a score between 0 and 13 points earns an A grade, while getting a C inspection grade takes 28 violation points. The Fellini Cucina opened very recently and has not received a formal inspection grade — possibly due to the fact that NYC’s DOH is experiencing a “staffing crisis,” as recently reported by Grub Street, with only “one inspector for every 414 restaurants.”
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Two weeks after Fellini’s health inspection report, there was still a line out the door to get into Fellini on a Saturday night.
Despite the persisting clout surrounding the restaurant, Corey maintains that “it was important to say something” and was grateful the DOH followed up on his report.
BuzzFeed reached out to management at Fellini and the NYC Department of Health; neither responded to requests for comment. We’ll update this post accordingly if they do.
