I don't think I've ever had such poor service before in my life. My party of 5 arrived around 3pm for a late lunch, and the restaurant was fairly empty while there were a few patrons for the ice cream area. My guess is that a lunch rush just ended because almost every empty table was littered with glasses, plates, and ice cream dishes.
It took about 5 minutes of standing in the foyer for someone to finally come over and seat us. We were seated at a booth for 4 (maybe 6 if 4 were small children), but managed to squeeze in all 5 of us. Our waitress, Katy, came over in a reasonable amount of time and took our drink order, and delivered said drink order also in a reasonable amount of time. She then took our food order, and quickly out came our Mini Mozzarella Sticks appetizer, which were pretty good. Then, it all went downhill.
Again, I have to emphasize how few tables there were with people. Our waitress has 2 others when we arrived, and when those left 3 more joined. Not hard to keep track of 4 tables, especially when the other three were just 2 people. We waited about 20 minutes for our food to come out. Reasonable, but on the longer side of reasonable for how dead the restaurant was. I was in the bathroom when the food came out, and came back to discover I had been given a BBQ Burger (like 3 other members of my party had ordered) rather than the BBQ Chicken Supermelt I had ordered.
I decided rather than wait for our waitress (who I think we saw once in that 20 minute span) just to eat the burger, which quite frankly wasn't as good. Also, I didn't feel like waiting then another 20 to get my sandwich. While we ate our food, the other tables ordered and had their food delivered. When we finished, our waitress was nowhere to be found, as were barely of the other 6 wait staff we had seen standing around. A few of us used the bathrooms, and when walking by the kitchen saw what appeared to be a confused group of poor waitstaff standing around not knowing how to do their job, as most of the tables that were dirty when we walked in were now still dirty an hour later.
We waited, in all, 30 minutes for our waitress to bring us the check. We were initially going to order ice cream, but lost our appetites and didn't want to be trapped in the Friendly's forever.
We got our check, it came out to $70.01, and I left $71.00 since I didn't have any change. If the restaurant was busy, if our waitress had even at least once acknowledged that we had been waiting or weren't being attended to, that could have saved it. But, she didn't, and the restaurant was dead.
I don't know if there were no managers on duty, but if there were they should be fired along with half of the wait staff. Anyone with two arms and a head could have served us better or done a better job managing the mess that was this restaurant. The sad thing is we've eaten here before and it's been OK, which is all I expect from a Friendly's. But this, this really just ruined it. This place has gone downhill, and the garbage decor left of the tables matches the quality of the restaurant. I'll give my business to any other restaurant from now on, because I'll probably get the food I ordered at least. read more