
Hacienda’s had edgy billboards before, but this one is over the edge.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A northern Indiana restaurant that erected billboards referring to the 1978 Jonestown cult massacre in which more than 900 people died has removed the signs after complaints that they were offensive.
Jeff Leslie, vice president of sales and marketing at Hacienda, acknowledged the billboards were a mistake.
The billboards included the statement, “We’re like a cult with better Kool-Aid,” over a glass containing a mixed drink, as well as the phrase “To die for!”
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“Our role is not to be controversial or even edgy. We want to be noticed — and there’s a difference,” Leslie told the South Bend Tribune. “We have a responsibility to (advertise) with care, and that’s why we’re pulling this ad. We made a mistake and don’t want to have a negative image in the community.”
In November 1978, more than 900 members of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple drank cyanide-laced, grape-flavored punch in a mass murder and suicide in the group’s compound in Guyana.