Hello Jenna B,
Thanks for your review , thankfully trip advisor gives hotels and restaurants the chance to respond so here goes.
Just to be crystal clear I am the person that you are referring to as management so I am fully aware of what actually happened. I literally had just stepped in the door and had not even started my evening shift when one of my excellent staff came to me and said we dont split bills do we.... to which I replied no we are too busy and our pay station is not set up for social distancing so we need just one payment per table. This was a private conversation between me and my staff member which you overheard. I was not at any stage rude to you or any of your party. In fact I never even spoke to any of you even though your post would suggest otherwise.You returned to your party of 16 and told a different story.
As you can imagine we have had to totally overhaul our business and we are like everyone on the planet learning as we go in the midst of this global pandemic and so there are a number of reasons why we dont split bills.
1. Social distancing at our pay point is difficlut to say the least.
2.Credit card machines have to be sanitised after each use.
3. Touch screen tills have to be sanitised after each use.
4. The time it takes to put each payment through when we have over 100 tables.
There is an excellent payment app called revolut , I would strongly recommend that you and all of your party download it. Every person working in the hospitality industry loves to hear the word revolut, it makes our job so much easier but it also makes sorting bills so much easier for our customers.
Now onto other points that it is important other trip advisor users know.
You arrived to our restaurant with 16 people and no booking, I doubt very very much that any other establishment in town would have taken in such a large group with no booking and social distancing to be considered. Due to covid 19 we have to take bookings and contact tracing details for every table and table plans have to made for every single day . Your party took up 4 of our tables , we had to reshuffle all of our bookings and table plans that evening to accommodate your party which we were happy to do but yet there is no mention of that.In hind sight I am sorry that we didn't just turn you away.
You also seem to have forgotten to mention in your review that you also got 2 free desserts. You got them because when you arrived back to your table you made very loud comments about what you were and weren't going to say on trip advisor so the girl in charge of your station decided to give them to you free of charge. You are not the first customer to loudly throw the trip advisor comments about and unfortunately you wont be the last. It is important that everyone reading this knows exactly what happened.
The last thing that you did which was honestly the most upsetting for me and for the young member of my staff involved. You actually told her that the food was excellent and the service was excellent and that you wanted to leave her a tip but instead you were going to put up your review on trip advisor!!!!!! A 16 year old girl !!!!!! Did you feel that punishing a hard working 16 year old girl would make you feel better !!! That young girl served you from start to finish, she is an outstanding worker and is genuinely one of the best waitress's we have ever had. She deserved her tip, it was a table of 16 ............the fact that you felt you had to tell her that ......well I'll leave that up to other readers to decide for themselves what that says about you.
Lucky for her I don't have a nasty bone in my body so I gave her a €20 tip for waiting on your group so brilliantly, she deserved it considering how genuinely upset she was by your comments when you left.
Don't worry about your unlikely return , it is unlikely that we would accommodate you in the way that we did again. Another lesson hard learned in the hospitality industry, its the usual case of the more you do for someone the less you get in return.
Download revolut ..........and please remember that we are all learning in what is a very difficult situation, book any future tables for 16 people in advance and consider the feelings of young staff that you encounter along the way.
