Hola faithful followers. I hope that you all are living and eating well. I wanted to take an opportunity to tell you an interesting story. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the burger chain Red Robin. It is quite popular in the Southern parts of the United States. A little over a week ago my coworker decided to go to Red Robin after work to celebrate her birthday. When the group arrived, around 7:30 on a Wednesday evening, they were treated to one act of horrible service after another. It took 30 minutes for the waiter to bring their drinks. He didn't offer any kind of apology or explanation. After one group member pressed him, he said, "Well, we ran out of vodka and the Blue Moon keg was empty." It took another 45 minutes for the food to arrive, and when it did, the pasta dish that the birthday girl ordered didn't have any sauce. When she asked for a cup of sauce, the waiter replied, "we're out of sauce" She wondered why this wasn't explained to her before, so she could order something different. The waiter never came back to check up on the group, and finally, someone asked to speak to a manager. The manager zoomed quickly by, said, "we'll comp that," pointing to the pasta, and kept walking, without giving the group time to voice their other complaints about the overall dining experience.
The whole experience was awful, from beginning to end. Several people contacted the corporate office to complain. My coworker even called back to the restaurant the next day to say that it was her first time ever going to a Red Robin, that she would never return, and that it was one of the worst birthdays she had ever experienced. The district manager told her that he was very sorry and offered to give her a make-up birthday party for herself and some of her friends. So, a few days later, we went back to Red Robins for a Birthday Party Redux. This time everybody was extremely nice to us. They comped all of the food and non-alchoholic beverages, and provided a full sheet birthday cake and balloons. We were given the best servers and everyone had a much better time. Now, my husband said that the first experience didn't sound that bad to him, and that they were probably making a big deal over nothing. He's muh more tolerant of bad service than I am. To me, bad service can ruin a dining experience, even if the food is amazing. Regardless, it was nice of Red Robin to provide my co-worker a do-over for her birthday, and this time they went above and beyond our expectations.
Note: Because I don't review large chains as part of my blog, I did not do the full-scale review of Red Robin that you would normally read on this blog.
I'm with you on that. I can cook for myself or order takeout. If I'm sitting in a restaurant, part of that experience is the service. And even if the food is horrible, I'll leave a good tip if the service is good.
When even the manager is that passe about the situation, I think the only appropriate course of action is to complain so that doesn't happen to anyone else again, free food or not. If they're that bad in front of the customers, imagine what's going on in the kitchen!
Posted by: The Blackout Blog | April 21, 2009 at 12:52 PM