Oh man, that is brutal. I feel for you. We had something similar happen when our payment link got messed up and sent everyone to a 404 page for like three days. It was a total mess. What honestly saved us was being super upfront about what went wrong, not just saying sorry but literally walking them through the fix step by step. I also made a personal call to our top 10 accounts that week, not a form email, just talking it out and letting them vent. Some folks still left, but the ones who stayed actually said they trusted us more after that. Maybe try that with your longer term clients, sometimes the personal touch does more than any apology template.

That mozzarella stick incident is basically a rite of passage for air fryer owners, honestly. The cheese drip always finds the hottest spot at the worst possible time. My last scare was with frozen taquitos, same exact thing, grease pool and smoke everywhere. Now I keep a spray bottle of water near the fryer just for these moments, feels dumb but it works. The towel waving panic is universal, so you're definitely not alone in this.