Restaurants

Restaurants Complaints – Your Available Options

Restaurants complaints are very common, but that doesn’t mean people always know what to do. We are going to be examining all of the available options here.

Restaurants Complaints – What You Need to Know

Let’s be honest here. This is a situation that you’ve probably been in multiple times in the past. The food in a restaurant wasn’t quite up to snuff, or the service was subpar at best. You aren’t happy, and you want to file a complaint.

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So how do you go about making a complaint? Well, typically with restaurants, you have a couple of options available to you. Service complaints can often be made to the front of house, who will be able to help direct your problem or make a note of it and pass it on to a higher power. However, if you have a problem with something like food, you may wish to bring to the attention of your waiter or one of the chefs.

How Do I Do This?

Now, how you go about filing a complaint will depend on the level of grievance you have. You may feel it is necessary to complain with the waiter or waitress loudly, or you may think it is more appropriate to take them aside and have a quiet word. Regardless of how you choose to complain, there are a few different things you should keep in mind.

Regardless of how you go about doing things, you’re going to want to be as polite as possible. The staff who work in a restaurant are often some of the most unrecognized and overworked people in the hospitality industry, and they deserve your respect just as much as you would afford respect to a manager. Try and remember that while they may be at fault, constructive criticism goes a lot further than yelling and abuse.

Where possible, you should also try and have a solution in mind when you make your complaint. For example, if the food is not warm enough, ask them to take it back and reheat it. If you have an answer to a problem already, you can save a lot of time and a lot of frustration by just asking for that to be done. It’s much more preferable for the staff as well, as they are typically swamped and don’t want to waste anyone’s time.

Taking a Complaint Further

When making a complaint, you often find that you are dealing with a waiter or waitress. These people are the connection point between the customer and the rest of the restaurant and often serve as messengers. However, while there are a lot of things that they can help to resolve, there’s an equal number of things that they can’t help you with.

When this happens, try not to get too mad at them. It’s not their fault. There are just things they aren’t trained to handle. However, you can take a complaint further if you wanted to. It’s pretty easy to do so. Just ask to see the manager. Typically, this is an older and more experienced member of the team, and they will be able to help you when it comes to doing pretty much anything. You have a much better chance of resolving your complaint when you involve a manager. But, we do caution against including them prematurely. Typically, a lot of complaints and problems can quickly be resolved without them.

Your Options

So as you can tell, you’ve got some options available to you when it comes to resolving restaurants complaints. It’s not always the easiest thing to do, especially when there’s a lot of people around, and you feel like you might be judged for standing up and saying something, but it is recommended that you do. There is an old expression, and it goes a little like this. “The customer is always right”. This is very true in the world of hospitality, and you have the right to challenge anything you want.

However, we do have to stress the importance of being polite at all times. While you do have a right to complain, the restaurant does have a right to ban you if they feel that your behaviour isn’t acceptable. It’s also always a good idea to come with a solution for the problem instead of just angrily complaining because this looks much better on you than just shouting because you can.