A New Jersey mother whose 3-year-old daughter upended a nearly $1,600 marble table over the weekend at an Ocean County café claimed she “wasn’t allowed to leave” before handing over her driver’s license and credit card information.
“I was completely humiliated and embarrassed,” Kathy Denman said in a viral TikTok posted shortly after the incident on Sunday. “I’ve cried since.”
Denman’s daughter, Allie, accidentally pushed over the table at the Hazelnut Cafe in Lavallette while waiting for her mom to pay for their coffee and ice cream, she explained in the video.
Surveillance footage of the incident shared with NJ Advance Media shows Allie apparently hitting the table with her foot, sending it crashing to the ground.
As two other customers in the packed café help pick the table up, several pieces from its underside can be seen still lying on the floor.
No one was hurt, but Allie was “frozen and scared and nervous,” Denman said, “and everybody’s reaction definitely didn’t help.”
Denman said she spoke to one of the café’s owners on the phone, who “kept repeating, ‘Our policy is: You break it, you pay for it.’”
She said she remained in the café for about 20 more minutes.
The Hazelnut Café is part of Hazel Boutique, a clothing and home decor brand with four locations in New Jersey.
It is owned by twin sisters Kimberly and Jenna Campfield. In a statement to NJ Advance Media, they said they were “extremely grateful” that everyone involved was safe.
“Following the incident, we personally called the child’s mother to express our concern, offer our support, and share our direct contact information should she need anything,” they said.
But they denied Denman’s claim that she had been prevented from leaving the café.
“We also want to be completely transparent: we would never hold anyone against their will,” they said. “The mother was not charged for the damaged table, even after asking how she could make it right given the table broke. We requested her contact information for insurance purposes.”
It was not immediately clear if Denman had handed over her credit card information, either with or without prompting.
In a brief phone call on Tuesday, Denman said she and her family were doing well.
“We’re good,” she said, adding that they were leaving the Shore and returning home to Pompton Plains later that day.
She did not return subsequent calls for comment. On Thursday, she posted a written statement to TikTok explaining that the Campfields had reached out to apologize “for how our family was treated.”
Denman said her family had accepted the apology and wanted “to move forward peacefully” and without further comment.
The video had amassed more than 10 million views by the time her statement was posted.
Online sleuths had been quick to find the table, an Anthropologie console that retails for $1,598, as well as a since-deleted video posted by the café that appears to show it tilting as patrons lean on it.
Denman said in her video that she’d learned the table weighed “600 pounds.” After NJ Advance Media reached out, Anthropologie updated its listing to show that it weighed 109.25 pounds.
A company spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether the item was intended for dining use.
The Campfields said in their statement that they had “since removed all tables from our locations to eliminate any risk of a similar incident.”
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AJ McDougall may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @oldmcdougall.
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