Joe's Crab Shack mistakenly served booze to group of young kids

For those among us who have not graced the hallowed fast seafood halls of a Joe's Crab Shack, the chain offers a specialty cocktail called the Shark Bite. And while that drink is a blue monstrosity of booze including vodka, rum, and, of course, blue curacao, the restaurant actually also offers a virgin version called the Shark Nibble.

Now, guess which version a six-strong group of 2- to 8-year olds were served last week in a Joe's Crab Shack in Colorado Springs.

According to reports from KKTV, it was the Shark Bite. Last Wednesday, the Montoya family's young cousins ordered the "sweet & fruity" drinks only to receive the adult, alcoholic version during a busy period of day for the restaurant due a "mislabeling" mishap.

A waitress returned to the table 30 minutes after delivering the drinks initially, leaving the kids to consume a fair bit of their Shark Bites — and, what's more, the 2-year-old apparently finished her entire alcoholic beverage.

"The managers actually came back with the tray of drinks and then let us know that they had accidentally poured alcohol into our kids' beverages," Omar Montoya said in an interview with KKTV. "[The manager] said it was 'mislabeled' and we were a little bit concerned with that kind of response."

The Montoyas ended up having to call paramedics as the kids began to feel sick, but eventually they all made it out OK.

Joe's Crab Shack, meanwhile, has acknowledged the incident, releasing a statement to KKTV:

"Joe's Crab Shack is aware of this incident at the Colorado Springs location, and we are investigating this matter internally. We do not condone underage service of any kind. Our guests can rest assured that our processes are continuously examined so that incidents like this are avoided."

Colorado Springs police are currently looking into the incident.

[OpposingViews]

UPDATE: Joe's Crab Shack has terminated the employee responsible for the incident for not following procedure. They have since released the following statement:

Joe's Crab Shack has taken the incident at our Colorado Springs location very seriously and are working with the ABC to prevent a recurrence.  We learned through an internal investigation that an employee at the restaurant had not been following procedure; their employment has since been terminated. Additionally, we dispatched a senior management team to retrain all Colorado Springs team members on proper beverage service and standards. We are doing everything we can to ensure that an incident like this does not happen again in the future.