Vikka — Restaurant in Leederville

Business owner is cold and has no business sense... I became aware of this pizza establishment through the EatClub app, when my family and I were looking for a casual dining place to eat out after an all-day event nearby. This was my first time using this app, and I wasn't up to speed on how to redeem the 20% discount. When we ordered at the counter, I asked the young lady serving us for assistance on how to redeem the 20% discount. She seemed quite confused at my request, which in turn confused me. My initial thoughts were that, how can the staff not know what to do when the business has obviously subscribed to the EatClub program. Surely, I'm not the first customer that's made this request. After some discussions the young lady advised that other customers had paid for their meal at full price and then took a photo of the payment receipt and lodged it with EatClub to redeem the 20% discount. I thought this seemed quite clumsy at the time, but nonetheless I paid the bill in full and would later contact EatClub. Whilst we were waiting for our meal to arrive, my wife decided to take a closer look at the EatClub app and discovered that we had to create an account first and then pay for the meal through the app to redeem the discount. With this information in hand, I went back to the counter and explained to the young lady how this whole EatClub app worked, thinking I was educating her as well, and asked if she would be happy to reimburse me the 20% discount considering the only reason we were there was because of EatClub. In addition, and most importantly, I believed that the miss information given to us before we paid was intentional. I feel like we were tricked into paying, and the whole confusion act initially was simply to make the process difficult knowing that once we paid, there was nothing I could do about it. The young lady advised me that she needed to run my request past the business owner, so I waited for a while at the counter and then the owner finally approached me. The business owner was very matter of fact and advised I should’ve placed the order through the app first. There was no apology for the initial confusion/misinformation by her staff or even wanting to try and assist me regarding this matter. Her response was that margins are tight and because I had already paid the bill there was nothing they could do. I went on to say that if that’s the case, then why have you signed up to the EatClub program? When I explained to her that I too was a business owner and there are times you need to do the right thing by your customers, she wasn’t interested. There was no emotion in her reply, it was cold and direct. I responded by saying that I would never frequent her pizza business again and would be expressing my dissatisfaction by writing about my experience on Google Review. I would never recommend this pizza...

We’ve always enjoyed the pizza at Vikka, and the staff have always been courteous, with the restaurant offering a nice ambience that enhances the overall experience. Tonight marked our third visit in two weeks, but unfortunately, our latest experience was disappointing, especially as we had been looking forward to a positive experience like the ones we've had in the past. We brought a small takeaway for one of our children, while ensuring we ordered enough food at Vikka for the four of us. Since there were no clear signs about outside food being prohibited, and knowing it was for a child, we didn’t think it would be an issue.

However, we were taken aback by the response from the female owner, whom we had not encountered during any of our previous visits. Her response felt less understanding than we had hoped. Rather than offering a more considerate solution, her tone made our child feel uncomfortable and upset, and subsequently unwilling to eat. While we respect the restaurant’s policies (we agreed to pay the requested BYO surcharge, understanding it was a fair requirement), we believe the situation could have been handled with more courtesy, especially considering our positive experiences in the past.

As a result, we left feeling disheartened, and unfortunately, we’re now unsure if we’ll return in the future after how the situation...

Expensive... But the pizza is top notch. The service is somewhat lacking though, always quite late, which is fine if picking up as just come 10min later than your pick up time and you'll be fine, but eating in can be annoying. We ordered just desserts first time we went and it took nearly 30min for the to come out, suspect the lady behind the counter forgot about us, but then came to table claiming she was rushed off her feet as it had suddenly got very busy... There was no more people in there than when we arrived and the place was less than half full 🤔

Next time we got takeout instead and as I say the pizza was really fantastic (though it ought to be at this price). Definitely worth getting a deal off Eat Club and getting takeout. Pity service in is so slow, the atmosphere down on the Leederville high street is great.

Edit: in response to the establishment's reply to my review, I do want to stress the fact that the pizza is fantastic, and I dont wish to dissuade anyone from checking the place out as it's well worth it (there's a meaty pizza that has honey on it and it was bloody delicious), the missus and I will more than likely get takeout from there again. But I appreciate their reviewing how desserts come out alongside other regular...