Two Restaurants Excluded From North Shore Eats Burger Poll

BEVERLY, MA -- Allegations that Greg Bates used his popular North Shore Eats Facebook group to shake down restaurant owners for gift cards and raised less money for charity than he claimed have not stopped the Beverly man from continuing his questionable practices. And now two restaurants who cut ties with North Shore Eats after the allegations were first reported in June appear to be the targets of retaliation.

For the second time since April, Bates is running his "annual" best burger poll on the site. While the poll is supposedly open to all North Shore restaurants that have burgers on their menus, Bates has excluded two restaurants -- Lazy Dog and Pier 23 -- from the poll. In posts on the site, Bates has claimed they had not received enough nominations from members of North Shore Eats, even though both restaurants had eight nominations, according to documents provided to Patch by a restaurant industry source.

Those eight nominations were more than those received by most of the eight other restaurants listed as finalists in the poll. In a messenger exchange with Patch Thursday morning, Bates continued to maintain that the restaurants had not received enough nominations, but stopped responding when asked specific follow-up questions.

"Who cares, right?" the source told Patch. "Sadly, this does affect all these businesses. This shows his biases and disproves his ridiculous claims. This guy hurts the industry."

Bates routinely solicited gift cards from restaurants, saying they would be raffled off for charity. But the Lazy Dog in Lynn stopped giving him cards and stopped posting daily specials in North Shore Eats after it was disclosed that he was not donating all of the money he raised. And Pier 23 stopped offering North Shore Eats members discounts when the restaurant's general manager took over ownership of the Gloucester restaurant.

In a statement sent to Patch after this story was first published, Lazy Dog manager Chris Pike said the restaurant had removed itself from contention for the burger poll.

"I want to set the record straight: we as a business chose not to participate in any North Shore Eats polls or events we have removed ourselves from that page and all food pages and the only gift cards we ever gave out was to the contest winners and we mailed them directly to the winner," Pike wrote.

In June, Bates told people he had donated between $100,000 and $200,000 to Northeast Arc. But the charity, which has since asked people to make donations directly, claims they only received $13,000 from Bates.

Several restaurant owners have claimed Bates would ask for two gift cards when he solicited donations: one purportedly for his fundraisers and one that he kept for himself. Businesses that refused claim they were banned from posting on the group and that Bates badmouthed them to potential customers.

More on this story:

• Donations Don't Match Claims By North Shore Eats Founder
• Peabody Woman Recounts Shakedown By North Shore Eats Founder
• Beverly Man Accused Of Pay-For-Play Restaurant Reviews

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Patch file photo via Shutterstock.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).