In the Crumb and Get It bakery incident (August 15, 2012), a bakery owner in Radford, Virginia, declined to host a campaign event for then-Vice President Joe Biden, citing political differences. The incident sparked significant media coverage and a surge in business for the bakery. The baker was invited to introduce Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan at a political rally the following week.
Just after 10:00am on Wednesday, August 15, 2012, an advance team from Joe Biden's campaign entered the three-month old "mom-and-pop" [1] Crumb and Get It bakery, asking owner Chris McMurray if he would host an unscheduled media event, but McMurray politely declined, citing political differences. [2] McMurray said that the exchange was very kind—not heated, hoarse, or ill-mannered—a matter of political difference ("convictions about my faith" and then-President Obama's attitude toward business), with no offense to Biden. [2] McMurray later explained that he "would not like to be used as a photo op for (Obama/Biden's) campaign". [3] Biden's event was held at the nearby River City Grill instead. [2]
A television reporter for WDBJ, Roanoke, Virginia, received a tip about the occurrence, a resultant story being picked up by the Drudge Report and various conservative blogs. [2] The coverage led to an outpouring of support and a surge in business the next day [2] that caused it to close down at 1:15pm because it ran out of food. [1] McMurray opened shops in Fredericksburg and Lakeland before later shutting its doors. [4]
McMurray's disagreement stemmed in part from his reaction to Obama's "You didn't build that" remark the previous month in Roanoke. [2] Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan requested that McMurray introduce him at a rally in Roanoke the following week, [3] when McMurray told the crowds "We (small business owners) did build it". [4] Three non-partisan fact-checkers subsequently found Obama's remark to refer to public infrastructure and not to the small businesses themselves. [2]
Reports that Secret Service agents subsequently entered and thanked McMurray "for standing up and saying no" and "bought a whole bunch of cookies and cupcakes" [1] were later contradicted by a Secret Service spokesman who said the agents were there to thank the shop owners for their trouble and apologize for any inconvenience the advance team may have caused. [5]
The Crumb and Get It incident "re-entered the national conversation" after the 2018 Red Hen restaurant controversy. [6] At that time, the owner of an unrelated Pennsylvania bakery of the same name reported being "slammed with messages" concerning the incident in Virginia six years earlier. [6]
The Crumb and Get It incident was among similar incidents that "re-entered the national conversation" [6] in the wake of the 2018 Red Hen restaurant controversy.
In the 2012 Masterpiece Cakeshop incident, a Colorado baker refused to make a customized wedding cake for a gay couple due to the owner's religious opposition to their marriage. [7]
In 2015, a county clerk in Kentucky, Kim Davis, refused on personal religious grounds to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. [8]
In the June 2018 Red Hen restaurant controversy, a restaurant co-owner in Lexington, Virginia who disapproved of President Trump's administration's policies asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the restaurant. [4] Contrasting with the generally positive reaction received by McMurray, after Sanders tweeted about the incident, the restaurant quickly became the object of an online troll campaign, extreme Yelp reviews, and a negative tweet from President Trump himself. [4]
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