A follow-up TikTok about a night out at Applebee’s is getting attention online after the creator said she still hasn’t heard back from the company weeks later.
Posting under the handle @sophia_attardi, the creator from Tennessee returned to the platform to give an update on an earlier video that she says had already pulled in 2.6 million views. She and two friends stopped at an Applebee’s location in New Jersey for the chain’s discounted margarita promotion, ordering drinks that, by her math, cost about three dollars total between the group.
“We went in for dollar marks,” she says in the clip, adding that the server checked their IDs without objection at the time of ordering. It wasn’t until later, after the group had already finished eating and drinking, that a manager allegedly asked to see the IDs again and walked off with them for around fifteen minutes.
A manager takes a second look at their IDs
When the manager returned, the creator claims she was told the restaurant could no longer accept the IDs. “So actually, we can’t accept these, okay?” she recalls being told. She says she asked about calling the police and was directed to a non-emergency line that went unanswered.
The creator says she noticed a crease running down her Tennessee driver’s license that hadn’t been there before she handed it over. “I did not hand you my ID looking like this,” she says she told the manager, who allegedly responded, “I was just bending it to see if it was real, girl.” What started as a night out for margaritas ended with a dispute with restaurant staff over her ID.
The restaurant reportedly offered thirty dollars toward a replacement and agreed to comp the drinks, which the creator says she initially accepted. But when she later tried to order a new license online, she says she was told she’d need to appear in person at a Tennessee DMV location, more than a 13-hour drive from where she was staying in New Jersey.
She says the manager later told her the concern was actually about her friends’ New York IDs rather than her own. “If that’s true, then why is, like, none of it made any [expletive] sense?” she says.
Some commenters said the story reminded them of their own experiences with restaurant staff questioning their IDs. One commenter wrote, “Applebees took my military ID to the back, without asking she just walked off with it, and then denied me service saying they have never seen one before.” Another urged her to file a police report, writing, “It’s illegal to permanently crease government documents such as IDs. File a police report.”
A third questioned the restaurant’s own logic in serving the drinks before raising any concern, an issue that has also come up in disputes over comped bills and bar policy: “They ‘didn’t accept it’ but they still let you DRINK?? What if you were actually minors with fake ids? They would have already broken the law! It’s too late for takebacksies.”
As of now, the creator says Applebee’s has not responded to her directly, and she’s called pursuing legal action “a lot to be honest.”
Published: Aug 25, 2026 09:59 am