damned bandwagoners spoiling my perfectly good beer night

in the interests of fairness
i give you a response from st. augustine's to my fuck you to them of yesterday
because they will not take reservations during hockey play-offs

but
and you knew there'd be a but
i feel compelled to add that i contacted st. augustine's back in september and had an email exchange with the very same anthony (who kept my email address from then and used it to send the response below)
and very specifically said that we would want a table every single wednesday night from september through april and was that an issue for ufc fights or canucks games nights falling on a wednesday
i was assured it would not be a problem and he'd mark down our standing reservation in the book
now, our standing reservation never made it into the reservation book
so we tooks our chances for a table or i had to remember every wednesday to call in
which fortunately only made for some creative table acquiring rather than not being able to get a table
but it was still a little stressful on a night where i just wanna drink me some craft beer
so i wasn't thrilled with our treatment at the hands of the management of st. augustine's already
don't get me wrong, our servers have been amazing and wonderful and we love them
i just thought customer relations from on high could have been much better
(and i've heard similar grumblings in the beer geek world, so i'm not alone on this one)
blah, blah, blah
okay, on to the response:

Hi Rebecca,


I saw your blog post (http://becksbeerblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/st-augustines.html... or at least I'm assuming it's your post) and just wanted to send a quick note to offer an explanation.

First off, we DEFINITELY appreciate your loyalty and patronage over the past year or so. Your group has become one of the fixtures of Wing Wednesday and the staff love you guys.

Over that time I'm sure you have noticed that we have become progressively busier. Any given Wednesday (even without hockey) is fairly packed and as a direct consequence reservations, especially larger groups, have become increasingly more difficult to accommodate. Now taking into account the fact that playoff fever is at an all-time high in this city and the fact that we offer a fairly unique game-viewing experience (40 craft taps, lots of big TVs) it is safe to say that demand will be extremely high and we will be turning away dozens of people at the door every game. In many respects it's a "good" problem to have, but it does lead to some challenges which require tough decisions and ultimately, as in this case, sometimes some hurt feelings or resentment.

While I would love to be able to hold seats for all our regular customers that have requested resos it simply isn't feasible... we would literally have an empty restaurant right up until game time. After taking many factors into account (for example, our experience with holding reservations during the World Cup and the problems that caused) and in the interest of fairness (how "regular" do customers have to be for us to hold a game-time reso?) we have made the decision to not take ANY reservations during Canuck games. I'm sure that this policy is inline with most sport-centric establishments around town.

I apologize for the inconvenience and obvious frustration this has caused you. I personally know what it feels like to be a regular at an establishment and to feel "slighted" by them. Hopefully you can see our side of the situation and understand why we have made the decision.

Cheers!
Anthony

i guess its great that a craft beer place is having the problem of being too popular
sure, i can understand their position
but its something i checked in about way, way back in september when i moved beernesday to st. augustine's from its former home
so i stand by the fact that if you can't accomodate us, we'll probably find ourselves someone else who will
tall order perhaps, but we've got until september to make it happen
in the meantime, we're getting creative with the three remaining beernesdays of the season
and that might just end up being a really fabulous thing

Comments

  1. i stand corrected: it was nick i was dealing with back in september, not anthony. my apologies for not fact-checking before slinging accusations.

    ReplyDelete

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