Festival Foods — Local services in Janesville

4 weeks ago I placed an order for a birthday cake for my daughter's second birthday. I picked it up today and it was awful. Her name was not only spelled wrong, but for some reason they randomly hyphenated it. When I pointed that out to that lady in the bakery who brought me the cake she said "Oh, well I can see if they can take the hyphen out for you, but they can't rewrite the name." So she came back and the name was still spelled wrong, but hey, at least the ugly line in between her name was gone. Sort of. You could still see remnants of it. And, it was supposed to be a pink and white and purple marble Minnie Mouse cake with VANILLA buttercream frosting. It was brown bricks for some reason. Odd. I asked why it was brown bricks and was told by the busy and distracted bakery lady that it was just how they did it and she was not responsible because she had no idea who took the order or made the cake. But she took $5 off for the toys that were on it. Gee thanks. That makes it all better. So, my husband and I went to the Service Desk and the very nice girl said she would get Dalton for us. Dalton kept interrupting me while I told him the problem, didn't care what I had to say and summed it up to having new cake decorators. He also stated that it's probably not chocolate frosting because sometimes they dye it brown for color effect. It's not their fault because they're new cake decorators. Well my daughter's cake looks like an amateur made it, it's uneven, the piping could have been done better by my 11 year old and I was forced to pay for it with my $5 discount because it's her birthday today and where else would I get a cake in 2 hours to be ready for her party? Thanks Festival Foods, we will NEVER come back here again for a cake. Or anything else if this is how you run your business. Also, I will upload photos later. This cake is ridiculous.

*Update: It was indeed chocolate frosting so after being lied to, forced to purchase a cake that wasn't what I ordered and treated as though no one at Festival Foods cares about their customers' I can add throwing over half a cake away because no one liked it. My 2 year old daughter included because she doesn't care for chocolate much. So, once again, thanks Festival Foods for your superb customer service. I sincerely hope this doesn't happen to...

I hate to be one of those people who only leaves a review when they had a bad experience, but I had a very awkward experience at this store yesterday that I felt should have gone differently, and if I had seen a manager in the moment I would have said something.

Let me preface by saying we come here pretty regularly and the facility is always clean and well stocked. Yesterday I had a decent sized cart of groceries so I went to a checkout lane where the staff bags for you. There seemed to be only one bagger to cover all the lanes, which is fine, I understand being short staffed these days. When the cashier was done scanning my groceries they all sat on the conveyor belt and no one was bagging, so I started bagging a few things myself. There was no one else in line at any register, but the cashier proceeded to just stand there watching me bag everything myself, did not offer to help, just watched me. I was taking awhile because I had a decent amount of groceries and I was digging under the cabinet to get more bags, which again, the cashier did not offer to help as I’m searching for more bags to bag my own groceries. I looked around and the other cashier and bagger in another lane who were not helping anyone also looked at me and did not offer to help.

I felt super awkward searching for bags and bagging my own groceries in a “We Bag” lane while at least 3 employees just stood there and watched me, not offering to help or find someone who could help. Then someone else came into my lane to checkout, and I was holding up the line, again because I was bagging everything myself, scouring the lanes for bags with no help.

I’ve worked in a grocery store before, and this was just very very poor service and I’d even say a lack of personal decency on all the employees who watched me awkwardly struggle instead of helping. If I wanted to bag my own groceries I would have gone to one of the self-service lanes. This experience was also not from a lack of staffing. It was a lack of awareness and decency from the staff. I have to think Festival can train their employees to do better if the employees themselves don’t have the awareness...

Festival Foods is hands down the best grocery store in Janesville and it's not because of their squeaky clean store, or their amazing deli, or the fantastic bakery, or even the always freshly-stocked produce.

It's the superior customer service experience.

Genuine customer service isn't about what you do for the customer, it's how you do it, and the team at Festival has shown my family on multiple visits why they earned their incredible rating on Google.

Our family originally shopped at Woodman's for the convenience of online ordering and pick-up. We liked Woodman's just fine but we definitely noticed a lack of quality in the service we received. Cashier's tended to be aloof or joyless, and there was never anyone around to help.

But what could we do? Well, when Festival started their online ordering program, we switched over just to try it and the difference was like night and day.

The team at Festival is always a pleasure to speak to, they are quick to resolve any issue, and they are sincere in their willingness to help.

I can't say enough wonderful things about this store and their exemplary attitude. Great customer service should never be undervalued. At the end of the day, the customer will never remember your name or what you did for them... but they will remember how you made them feel. And this store always makes my family feel great when we shop there.

I don't write a lot of reviews, but I had to take a moment to share my experience.

To end this, here's my top 5 favorite things about this store:

The bakery is amazing. Better than any other in the area, in my opinion.

Each aisle has a laminated directory of foods and which aisles they can be found on (genius!).

The staff is regularly visible and happy to help (they don't run off an hide like some other places).

They have an indoor daycare to watch the kids while you do the shopping! (And an outdoor kennel for the pups.)

The store has themed events tied to major holidays that are...