In September, the Ooltewah Whistle Stop’s Facebook page was hacked, impacting the vintage-themed diner’s ability to communicate with customers.
General Manager Cassie Ball said social media has played a big part in marketing and outreach for the business, located at 5503 Main St., and the social media hack impacted those efforts.
“We had 24,000 followers on our original Facebook,” Ball said. “Our community has been amazing … with all the love and support, and then we went to zero. We’re basically starting from scratch.”
Ball said the owners created a new Facebook page for the business in October, and the new Facebook page has 2.6 thousand followers.
Compared to sales from last year around this time, current sales are much lower, she added. And more than anything, the hack and slowdown in business have affected the employees.
“If I don’t have sales coming in, my servers don’t have tips,” Ball said. “And they depend on their tips.”
According to Ball, owners of the business usually manage the social media account. She first noticed the hack when someone uploaded a post about socks on the Whistle Stop Facebook page.
Ball said she thought it was strange and wondered: “Why is the owner posting about socks?”
When she asked the owner about the post, Ball said the owner told her the Facebook account had been hacked.
Ball said she doesn’t know who hacked the account. She said the hacker went into the email address attached to the Facebook account, and the owner lost access.
Ball hopes supporters of the business will unfollow the old page and that the new page will continue to grow.
“I hope all 24,000 followers from our previous page decide to rebel against these crazy hackers and follow our new page,”she said. “And show them that whatever their motive was for doing that to a small local business [that it] is not going to prevail.”
