I usually like to praise publicly, and critique privately, but as their website has no corporate email or corp phone number as of a few days ago, here I am.
We have been eating at and getting take-out from Blue Barn in Corte Madera for years, but we're done with them, at least for now. Long before Covid, we regularly got take-out from them, and while we love their food - mostly 4-5 stars - BB is reliably unreliable regarding take-out order accuracy. A few of these mistakes are from special requests, but most mistakes are with their normal offerings made incorrectly. For instance, they have their version of a Waldorf salad. We all know the original one has a lot of apples. What did they leave off of the salad last week? Apples. Not a single one. The time before that, the pecans were completely missing, as well as the bread that comes with all salads - it was missing from both our salads (good bread). Another time, wine was missing. I called and got a credit for it (a friendly person helped me), but I was really looking forward to that. Getting a glass of wine, take-out, is SO cool. (The container leaks though - be careful.) These are just a few examples, but we've experienced ongoing errors. Finally, last week I may have accidentally ordered two of one type of salad, and then another salad we wanted as well. I was using their online order form (via my laptop), and didn't see a salad in my cart when it should have been there, so I clicked on it again. I guess I ended up with two of that one, plus another salad we wanted. So, when my husband picked up our order, he saw the extra salad and told the woman who gave it to him (before he called me to check), that we'd just ordered two salads total. She quickly told him NO, that's what we ordered, and if we had trouble ordering online, maybe we should call in instead in the future. Then she turned her back to him and walked away, eliminating the possibility of any future conversation with him. He called after her wanting clarification, but she'd gone on to help someone else, ignoring him. This could have been my error and not a website order form issue (but that's also possible, but I'll take the blame), but it was one of their most common salads, with no alterations, and not touched by, opened, (nor breathed on) by us, so it could have easily been given to someone else, but no, my sweet hubby was flat out dismissed and basically told, "Tough." Good customer service means being gracious and helpful, no matter what the situation, or how the error came about. This girl didn't get that. Any restaurant can easily find a balance and make everyone happy. She made no such attempt and apparently hasn't been trained to do anything more than the bare minimum. Even a kind person who's not specifically trained to be helpful would hopefully know HOW to be helpful and WANT to help, but she clearly didn't want to - but I digress. (FWIW, we're firmly settled into Covid precautions now, so that it's not an excuse for poor customer service anymore. Plus, take-out has always been a big part of Blue Barn's business.)
Bottom line, when made as described on their menu, their food is really good. But, when we've experienced years of mistakes and now unresponsive customer service, it's just not worth the drive, nor the money.
Finally, Blue Barn, if you had a corporate email or contact form on your website, this would have been a private email instead of a public review. This, yet again, demonstrates their level of desire to interact with their customers. read more