After Applebees alcohol mix-up, Florida mom says toddler given sangria at Olive Garden

ORLANDO, Fla. — After Applebee’s was forced to retrain its staff following a mistake that led to a Michigan child receiving a margarita, a Florida mom said her toddler got a little tipsy after being served sangria at an Olive Garden, myFOXorlando.com reported Wednesday.

Jill Van Heest took her two-and-a-half-year-old son Nikolai to dinner at an Olive Garden in Lakeland, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Orlando, on March 31.

The boy ordered orange juice and his mom said he drank most of what was in his child’s plastic cup when a waiter came to the table.

“We’re eating our meals when the waiter came over and said there’s been a mistake, I need to get you a new one and took the glass and kind of scurried away,” Van Heest said.

She asked him what was in the cup and was told Tropical Sangria, a mixed drink of orange juice, pineapple juice and white wine. Van Heest spoke to the restaurant manager. “He was very sympathetic, very apologetic, but no real explanation as to how it happened, just that it was a mistake,” she said.

Van Heest said Nikolai was acting strangely and misbehaving throughout the dinner. “He was visibly drunk. His eyes were dilated, they were red. He was now getting loud,” she said.

She took Nikolai to the hospital but doctors could not immediately determine how much alcohol was in his system. It was not expected to suffer any long-term effects.

A spokesperson for Olive Garden, Rich Jeffers, said it was an “extremely regrettable accident caused by the failure of an employee to follow our strict operating procedures.”

“We take this situation very seriously, and we are especially grateful that the child involved was not seriously harmed. We have absolutely no tolerance for failure to follow our operating procedures and we took swift, appropriate action to deal with this situation, he added.

The incident comes after an employee at an Applebee’s in Michigan mistakenly served a margarita mix drink to a toddler instead of apple juice.

The mother of the 15-month-old boy called police to the restaurant in Madison Heights, Mich., Monday after noticing the toddler was acting drunk and resting his head on the table after just a few sips of the “juice.”

Police officers discovered the child was accidentally served a drink that was 0.14 percent alcohol. He was subsequently rushed to the hospital, where doctors found his blood alcohol level was over the limit for an adult driver.

In response, Applebee’s said children will now be served juice from single-serve containers at their table and it would retrain its servers.

Olive Garden’s Jeffers said that restaurant chain was also taking steps to ensure the accident was not repeated.

“We are also taking immediate steps to reinforce our standards. We offer our sincerest apologies to the family of the child, and to all of our guests, whose trust we work so hard to earn,” he said.

For more on this story, please go to MyFoxOrlando.com.

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