I lived in Oak Park for over 22 years and I have eaten at QBBQ several times over the years.
The reason I'm writing this review doesn't have to do with the food, which I always have felt is consistent and most of the offerings are delicious.
I'm writing today about the service. We ordered takeout for the second time in the past two months, where in both instances our delivery showed up and was missing items.
In both instances, we called back to talk to the manager. The first time I had to drive all the way back to Q to get an item only to find out that the Kitchen already closed so they offered me a bottle of barbecue sauce as a make good. OK not ideal and I just spent an extra half an hour going to and from the restaurant but things happen.
In the second instance, my son initially called to ask them to send the two missing side items. He was then instructed to call Uber eats because that's who delivered the order and the choice he clicked on for delivery on the Q website. He tried calling Uber eats and they said the best thing to do is offer for him $1.95 credit. Mind you the two side items were about six dollars each before any taxes ($12).
Now we're missing parts of our meal and being told that even though they screwed up, they're only gonna give us the equivalent of 15% of items that we paid for.
I called back to talk to the manager, who explained to me that since we ordered through Uber eats from the Q site, they were responsible for our food. Uber eats has nothing to do with packing the food to go out. It's your restaurant. It gets packed in the kitchen. Asked if they could send the two side items and she said "we don't have a driver" though earlier in the conversation she said we could've selected Q to deliver the food versus Uber eats.
I told her that if they can't make this right then I'm going to have to put a bad review out on social media. She then said she was going to tell on me to the owners. Which I said " I hope you do because I'm sure they want the restaurant to run better so they don't lose customers." I also said I would wait to write this review to hear from the owners first which I never did.
It's disappointing because I hate to leave two stars because the food is really good, but food is only one part of running a good restaurant. Since Covid, I feel that they have really nice kids working in the restaurant, but they're always short staffed. That likely leads to the fact that things are getting left out of orders.
The other thing and this isn't only a Q problem.
Uber eats and their competitors like DoorDash are killing the restaurant industry. I was trying to explain this to my kids, and I highly encourage anybody reading this to check out the last week tonight episode with John Oliver about the subject. These services I'm not only charging for service fee, which is understandable cause they're delivering the food but the real crime is they're marking up the menu. In many cases, you can call the restaurant directly or you have a choice on the restaurant website to order directly through them or through the services like Uber Eats.
As an example with my order a barbecue sandwich, my son bought would've been $9 directly through Q, but was $10.60 through Uber eats. All the sides were marked up like a quarter. If you're ordering for a family and you might normally be paying $80, through these markups you're going to be paying closer to $100 in some cases. Depends on the restaurant. Think about how much money that is overtime. The crime is the restaurant is not getting any of that extra money and now appears to be pricey.
Anyway, I'm disappointed in how this went down and I hope Q can turn it around . read more