Hopefully there’s a more mundane explanation, e.g. The article doesn’t seem to mention how big this group was. I have heard of restaurants requiring reservations for large groups, but I don’t know if your average McDonald’s has any policy like that, but if I was this team’s coach I think I would have called ahead first if it was a whole bunch of people on a bus or something just to see if everything wasn’t going to be a clusterfuck.
It’s bizarre though. It’s like they don’t want to make money.
That is a very generous interpretation. The article doesn’t say why, but racism is heavily implied, at least the way I read it.
If it was a technical problem, such as the grill was broken, or the number of people was in the hundreds, say, the owner wouldn’t have stressed that “everyone is welcome”.
I think the owner realized it was some bullshit a minimum wage racist had pulled, and now they were in the shit.