GlenPharmer Distillery — Local services in Franklin

The Good

I did like the ambience inside, it was overall good. Nice lighting (downstairs), floors and set up.

The prices were pretty decent regarding their downstairs bar menu(s).

There was a sweetheart of manager wearing a blue shirt (upstairs), he was informed that several of the advertised foods included some type of pork, when he discovered these foods were not said to have pork on the advertisement online, he did apoligize and make sure that we were served the sirloin without the included additional foods they put on it.

The Bad

A live 'intimate' concert was to be held. This was coordinated upstairs. There were approx 150 wooden chairs lined up row by row. When the concert started you could clearly see all the chairs were filled + several dozens of additional people had no choice but to stand, due to lack of wooden (or any other) chairs.

There were 10 different choices of appetizers to choose from:

Chicken & waffles, sirloin sandwhich, crab cakes, Beet salad with a greek yogurt, chicken tacos, spring rolls, meatballs...last three I recall one of them by toppings, while the other I two can't remmeber what they were.....One was A bread/cracker with cherry tomatoes, pesto and mozzarella. I realize that i'm not going to like every single item on the menu, however knowing from the online menu, I was okay with at least half of them and it sounded nice to me.

Before purchasing these 'intimate' tickets, these foods on the shown online menu didn't disclose that several of them were also including some type of pork or bacon in addition or in place, such as the chicken and waffles, sirloin meatballs and a few of the other items. This change in advertised foods was unacceptable and I went hungry during the two + hour serving of these appetizers.

When we arrived and checked in we asked the mgr (whom was at the lower level to greet the guests for this concert) if some of the foods could be changed a little such as removing certain toppings or other similar accommodations; his response was reprehensible, he said "That's why there's 10 different appetizers to choose from' & these come prepped like this" and dismissed us by walking away after he said this.

(continuing from the above mentioned good thing) The sad/funny thing is my wife said the sirloin was a cold cut roast beef and showed me the large amounts of fat on it, it looked and didn't smell good...she ate the first one (due to the very little she ate from the appetizers) and couldn't eat the other. I couln't take a bite, it looked that bad.

The band left early; I hold this distellry fully at fault for the band opting to do this. The band had issues with the lightning, sound, among other very noticebale problems they had...

I booked my son's 40th birthday party with Beth, the owner, who was very nice and spent a lot of time helping me to create the special menu, in which she provided me with a la carte pricing. I paid $ 250 for the tasting room, which was actually quite small and barely held my group of 18 people. The service was really terrible. The food was so-so at best. Every one of my adult children that attended related to me that Julie was rude to them. I learned all of this after the party in disucssions with my own 4 adult children that were there and two of them worked in the service industry for most of their adult lives so they had very realistic expectations. Julie told me three times that she could not take food orders until everyone was seated; guests were standing and in conversations and so the third time - my husband had to yell out for everyone please take a seat so that we can get food orders placed. This should have been handled by the staff, not us. Julie did not even know the prices, she told me "it's whatever you worked out with Beth" and I think the pricing should have been communicated to the staff. My son- the guest of honor - said she was SO RUDE to him. He asked if she was taking drink or food orders when then all sat down and she snapped at him well nobody was sitting down! When she brought out some appetizers and asked if they neefed anything else, he reminded her that there was still one appetizer missing and she snapped "I only have two hands": which he's still talking about several days after. He said he felt she was rude to everyone; we are polite and respectful restaurant guests: my son and his wife are highly educated professionals, their guests are the same, and as I noted my other adult children are professionals as well but all of them had restaurant work experience and usually have a lot of empathy for the staff; and they all felt that she was exceptionally rude. Julie brought out many appetizers including at least two that had not been ordered but she insisted they WERE ordered and stuck us with them, so I was forced to pay for extra food that nobody wanted. The food: the steaks were undercooked and my husband sent his back and they had to make a whole new one but all of the steaks were undercooked and by the time they sent the third one out to my husband the party was wrapping up. The scallops had raw peppers with them that should have been cooked. The compressed melon app was only a few pieces of cut up fruit, not what the menu represented and not worth the cost. What bothers me the most is that Julie was rude to my son, and he was the...

My wife and I had been really excited to dine here for some months after driving by a few times. Unfortunately, the experience left a lot to be desired.

After making a reservation and requesting an outside table, upon arrival we were told that outside seating was all booked. When seated, I noticed there were no less than 4 empty tables. I assumed those must be for other reservations and made my peace with the situation even though I felt it would have really added to our evening. From there I watched the same tables remain empty throughout the course of our meal with progressively more emptying every few minutes. While I understand these things can never be timed perfectly, I kept wondering why our hostesses wouldn’t have a least offered to reseat us when faced with what I can only assume to be a number of no shows. Some advice: your patio is gorgeous and a huge competitive advantage. Don’t hoard it like some kind of precious resource. If tables are available you should be filling them with customers who value that experience and will likely linger and spend more. To me, this kind of nonsensical attempt to generate scarcity, is beyond ridiculous.

Next point. When it came time to order drinks, I was excited to sample their on/premise distilled single malt. Guess what? Turns out they ran out. After a long internal “WTH moment”, I replied that I’d like to see the beer/wine menu. To this my server informed me that they are distillery and they don’t serve anything else but their own spirits. In any circumstance this would make sense to me but it might not be a bad idea to consider having back up options should you not be able to manage your operations/production schedule of said spirits. More options are better than none, even if that means swallowing your pride a bit in.the process.

Lastly, the food. The presentation was brilliant but the chicken and waffles I ordered could benefit from some small tweaks. The waffles came out soggy and the chicken was more like a schnitzel/cutlet as opposed to the more customary form that looks and tastes like fried chicken. Other than that, the syrup and other flavors meshed well. My wife’s sweet potato sandwich dish went over well though.

All in all, my advice is to better leverage the excellent fundamentals this place has going for it, amazing ambience, cool concept, creative dishes and improve on your operational excellence and listen to your customers. This isn’t NYC or Backbay and there’s no reason for a lot of the nonsense we experienced tonight. Hoping to give this another shot in a...