Stewart Rahr's Nobu Tantrum: Pharma Billionaire's Epic Fit Gets Him Banned For Life

Restaurant managers beware: Stewart Rahr is a loose cannon.

The flamboyant pharmaceutical billionaire, who calls himself “Stewie Rah Rah, the No. 1 king of all fun,” recently lost his cool after staffers at Nobu Fifty-Seven, a swanky restaurant in midtown Manhattan, refused to move diners so Rahr could sit at his favorite table, according to the New York Post.

“He called me the C-word and said he would kill me,” a Nobu manager told the Post, which has reported that Rahr is now banned from the restaurant’s 25 locations worldwide.

Rahr, whose net worth is an estimated $1.6 billion, was the owner of Kinray, the world's largest privately owned pharmaceutical distributor before it was bought by Cardinal Health in 2010 for $1.3 billion.

Following his Nobu tirade, Rahr reportedly sent an email to the restaurant’s founder, Drew Nieporent, with several celebrities copied including Leonardo DiCaprio, Donald Trump and Nobu co-owner Robert De Niro.

“DREW U SHOULD BE AWARE OF THE ONLY 2 RULES hanging over my employee entrance for the past 41 yrs,” Rahr wrote. “Rule #1 CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT!!!! Rule #2 EVEN IF CUSTOMER IS PLUCKEN WRONG SEE RULE #1.”

Read the full email at Forbes.

Nobu's hardly the first business to break rule No. 1. In October, an all-you-can-eat buffet in England banned two patrons for eating too much. In Berlin, a cafe installed a giant pin-shaped concrete pole to prevent customers from entering with baby-strollers. And in the U.S., a new website recently launched that helps business owners blacklist bad clients.

Nor is this the first time Rahr's gotten the boot. In 2005, he was asked to leave a fundraiser for Haiti in the Hamptons after pushing his way into photos with Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep.

Paparazzi frequently capture images of Rahr rubbing elbows with A-listers, including a photo taken at an NYC gala in October with rapper Kanye West, who, in his 2010 hit “See Me Now,” famously sang, “I might walk in Nobu with no shoes; He just walked in Nobu like it was Whole Foods!”

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Comments

[kimi2321]

that guy is a POS. why is it people with money think that they can treat people however they want? fuck you "rah rah"!

[Melpomene]

The whole "The customer is always right" stuff REALLY gets on my nerves. If I recall, it was started in the US as a marketing campaign. In the UK Selfridges used it for a while. So what if it's something this knob chooses to have above his employee entrance? That's HIS choice, and it's not a requirement that any other place of business follow this idea.
I love when customers trot it out to me, as if that's going to make me change my mind "Really?! Gosh, I had no idea! I'm so sorry, of course you're right, you did buy this from this exact store 17 years ago, even though this store has only been open 3 years, and the label inside is 'A Store Not Us'. Let me give you a full refund on that - £600? Of course." Bite me. The second you trot out that "Customer is always right" tripe, it cements my determination to do anything I can to make sure you don't get what you want. I'll be polite, and I'll work to find mutual ground, but you're not going to win with this. Oh, and adding on "Trading Standards would be interested to find out about this" just makes me want to laugh. No they won't. They won't give a flying fig, because we're going above and beyond what they dictate must be done, and attempting to 'threaten' me with TS doesn't work either. I don't need this job. You piss me off enough and I will let rip, quit and go home.

Sorry, slightly off tangent rant there.

[Chicajojobe]

I don't really love the part of the article where they equate kicking someone out for being verbally abusive, to a passive aggressive move by a German restaurant to keep out crying babies.
The point of this incident should be that you can't make unreasonable requests that would greatly inconvenience other customers and then abuse the employees who can't fulfill them, even if you're filthy stinking rich.

[Zmidponk]

Hmm. So, if the customer is always right, the customers who were eating at 'his' table were right to sit there, so what the fuck is he complaining about?

[Nobody]

@Zmidponk: that was my thought exactly! The people who got there first and were sitting at the table he wanted were also customers.

What he really meant was "the universe requires that I always get my own way." And no -- no it doesn't.