Thread: Wolfeboro Inn?
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Old 01-22-2011, 03:29 PM   #63
secondcurve
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gokart-mozart View Post
I don't think people are piling on. TWI is an important property in the community, and its success or failure is important to more than its owners.

Since they re-opened, the restaurant (Wolfe's Tavern) has repeatedly had problems in a town with several other good-to-great restaurants. Comments are (hopefully) helpful to management in trying to right the ship.

I've been there twice in the last month, once for breakfast and once for dinner.

Breakfast was great - service, food, and efficiency all A+.

Dinner (with 5 kids) was not so good. We were not greeted for five or so minutes, in effect standing in a bar. We got a nice large table but no waitress was assigned to our party, so it took 35 minutes to be greeted and to get menus. This gave me plenty of time to observe the venue. Waitstaff appeared incredibly stressed and were verbally complaining to customers about their tasks. The food was only fair - for what the food was,I thought I overpaid. I ordered a pizza (after the long delay I was hungry, and how can you screw up pizza?) It was horribly - greasy, bland, and lukewarm at best.

So - how's the Inn? Mixed notices is the best I can say, and, in a town where you can walk into the Bayside, the Restaurant, or Garwoods and never have a bad experience or a bad meal, I fear they may be running out of time.

There's SOMETHING about the staff that's a problem. I don't know anything about running a restaurant, and if I didn't know Wolfeboro I'd say, "Hick town, country bumpkin losers with Yankee reserve, what do you expect?" - Except I DO know Wolfeboro, and I know that the waitstaff at the competition, including two restaurants that have opened in the past year, are superb. The Inn draws from the same labor pool, so that's not it.

I'm afraid I have no constructive suggestions about what to do. If it were my problem to solve, I'd get a world class greeter, stand in the kitchen so no bad food went out the door, and try to stay in business until summer.
Very well said. These are the types of issues I have experienced, too. That being said, I have found the food to be pretty good, but service, as you point out, is lacking and then some. My theory is management understaffs and underpays its help so you wind up with disgruntled employees who deliver consistently poor service. I am not sure how to solve the issue either but I find it hysterical that one of the services that the owners of the Inn provide is consulting to other restaurants/Inns!!! Amazing.

Lastly, while there has been some improvement I'd tell anyone who wants to give it a try to avoid peak weekends, holidays, etc. This restaurant does especially poorly when there are a lot of folks around. Mozart's comments about waiting at the door to be acknowledged are spot on. I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me!
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