Rib joint manager unemployed after attacking customer on social media

CLEVELAND, OH – Unemployed B&M BBQ ex-manager Octavia Gunten’s academic and literacy skills were widely-displayed on Facebook when she wrote a response to this writer’s post about the high-priced food and long wait for it in a “fast food” drive-through line.  Instead of refunding money  for an order that had not yet been prepared, Gunten told this complaining customer B&M’s only offered exchanges for food so he might as well wait.  Over 30 minutes for three thighs, a small fry, a barely-full container of cold collard greens, with sauce on the chicken and fries, for $11.35.

Nearly 500 people joined this writer in exposing how the store Gunten managed for the B&M franchise that appeared on “The Food Network” was the chain’s worst for service.  A second post the next day generated an additional 500 complainers and a response from B&M owner Greg Beckham’s wife, Sonya Sterling-Beckham and Gunten their manager.

Sonya Sterling-Beckham added her own nasty and defamatory social media insults to her manager’s about a customer who complained of poor service they received from B&M BBQ.

Instead of addressing the complaints raised by more than 1000 former customers, both Sonya Sterling-Beckham and Gunten published defamatory statements about this writer as a complaining customer that had nothing to do with the way he was treated in Greg Beckham’s business under his family’s name.  Greg Beckham and his brother Anthony both use the B&M name but they’re not partners. 

This writer previously shared how Sonya Sterling-Beckham’s response was straight from the hood.  She defamed me by falsely describing me as being intoxicated in her store and sought to discredit my service in office as the City of East Cleveland’s former mayor.  She maliciously and falsely claimed I engaged in “disturbing behavior” while in office,  but accepted no responsibility for the service or wait.  I was lying about the length of time it took, according to Sonya’s “lying-with-her” manager.

The Beckham’s B&M manager, Octavia Gunter, maliciously and falsely claimed that I was intoxicated and lied that I disrespected her when I asked for a refund.  She also lied that I used “profanity” even though the service would have deserved it.

Since this writer has not stepped foot in the B&M store on Lee Road in Cleveland to learn anything about the fate of the store’s manager or its current appeal to customers, fans who follow the franchise provided me with information that Gunten was no longer a B&M employee.   

Eric Jonathan Brewer

Cleveland's most influential journalist and East Cleveland's most successful mayor is an East Saint Louis, Illinois native whose father led the city's petition drive in 1969 to elect the first black mayor in 1971. Eric is an old-school investigative reporter whose 40-year body of editorial work has been demonstrably effective. No local journalist is feared or respected more.

Trained in newspaper publishing by the legendary Call & Post Publisher William Otis Walker in 1978 when it was the nation's 5th largest Black-owned publication, Eric has published and edited 13 local, regional and statewide publications across Ohio. Adding to his publishing and reporting resume is Eric's career in government. Eric served as the city's highest paid part-time Special Assistant to ex-Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White. He served as Chief of Staff to ex-East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor; and Chief of Communications to the late George James in his capacity as the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's first Black executive director. Eric was appointed to serve as a member of the state's Financial Planning & Supervision Commission to guide the East Cleveland school district out of fiscal emergency and $20 million deficit. Former U.S. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson told Eric in his D.C. office he was the only mayor in the nation simultaneously-managing a municipal block grant program. Eric wrote the city's $2.2 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant application. A HUD Inspector General audit of his management of the block grant program resulted in "zero" audit findings.

As a newspaper publisher, Eric has used his insider's detailed knowledge of government and his publications to lead the FBI and state prosecutors to investigations that resulted in criminal prosecutions of well-known elected officials in Ohio; and have helped realign Cleveland's political landscape with the defeat of candidates and issues he's exposed. Eric's stories led to the indictments of the late Governor George Voinovich's brother, Paul Voinovich of the V Group, and four associates. He asked the FBI to investigate the mayor he'd served as chief of staff for public corruption; and testified in three federal trials for the prosecution. He forced former Cuyahoga County Coroner Dr. Elizabeth Balraj to admit her investigations of police killings were fraudulent; and to issue notices to local police that her investigators would control police killing investigations. Eric's current work has resulted in Cuyahoga County Judge John Russo accepting the criminal complaint he guided an activist to file against 24 civil rights-violating police officers in the city he once led for operating without valid peace officer credentials. USA Today reporters picked up on Eric's police credentials reporting from his social media page and made it national.

Eric is the author of of his first book, "Fight Police License Plate Spying," which examines the FBI and local police misuse of the National Crime Information Center criminal records history database. An accomplished trumpet player and singer whose friendship with Duke Fakir of the Four Tops resulted in his singing the show's closing song, "Can't Help Myself": Curtis Sliwa of New York's Guardian Angels counts Eric among his founding chapter leaders from the early 1980's role as an Ohio organizer of over 300 volunteer crime fighters in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown, Ohio. For his work as a young man Eric was recognized by Cleveland's Urban League as it's 1983 Young Man of the Year.

Known in Cleveland for his encyclopedic knowledge of government and history, and intimately-connected with the region's players, every local major media outlet in Cleveland has picked up on one of Eric's stories since 1979. There is no mainstream newspaper, television or radio outlet in Cleveland that does not include an interview with Eric Jonathan Brewer in its archives over the past 40 years.

Reply