TGI Fridays Doncaster — Restaurant in Melbourne

Really friendly staff, greeted and seated immediately. Downhill from there. 6pm on a Thursday place was no where near full but everyone seemed run off their feet. Had to hail staff down for service. Kitchen seemed to know what they were doing and meals came within about 15mins. Bar was atrocious. Ordered 2 daiquiris well before we ordered food and I had finished my meal before they arrived! Literally took well over 30 minutes. I went and asked the bar twice at 15min intervals to check they hadn't lost the order. They just apologised and said it was busy. I don't think they're very experienced. Ordered ice cream for the kids but after 15 minutes waiting (I suppose it's prepared in the bar?) we just went and paid. Had the pleasure of being charged for the kids meals too (Thursdays kids eat free) before I pointed out the error. The place wasn't even busy.

Update 15/8: This is management's response. Considered and detailed, but certainly nothing to entice us back. Will avoid the place from now on as no confidence it would be any different. Shame. Never trust a place where 'IT issues' lead to overcharging. Never seems to lead to under charging. One wonders just how many other customers haven't noticed and overpaid. Some might call that an incentive...

'Hi Nick,

We would like to really express our thanks in reaching out and providing us with such a detailed review and follow up email. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you this week. We would like to truly apologise as we can see that your last visit was not up to our standards. Your feedback has been really helpful for us this week to improve and better our processes.

As you mentioned in your message, unfortunately the bar was underprepared during your visit. We are currently onboarding new staff to the business in both the bar and on the floor, and we can see that the bar staff were not adequately prepared or experienced enough to handle the orders for that night. We have worked to since change our rostering and staffing levels to try to avoid such a situation occurring again. We really apologise as we understand that something like this can really affect your experience. We have our brand standards that show that drinks should only take 5 minutes, and on this occasion we have really dropped the bar and let you down.

Again, I would like to stress that your feedback has been really valuable to us to improve this issue.

Unfortunately, as you guessed, the free kids meals are currently seeing an IT issue where they have to be removed manually from an order, and are not automatically adjusting in price. Our staff are trying their best to rectify this and manually change the price when needed, although as you had to ask for this do be done, it seems that our team has not hit the mark this time and may have forgotten. We will be sure to remind all staff and try to avoid this happening again- in hopes that one day the IT will be up and working to automatically adjust the price as it can unfortunately be something easy to forget.

Again, we seriously thank you for reaching out; it helps us a lot. Your positive comments regarding the staff will not go unnoticed and have also been passed onto the team of the day.

Thank you again for your visit. We hope to be able to welcome you back into store again soon.

Kindest regards,

TGI Fridays...

Customer service was the worst part of this experience. I decided to come here with my mum for lunch as it was more quiet than the food court, so when we were offered a table, we asked the waiter if we could have a quite booth away from the busy walkways, but we were told that “it’s Saturday, so it’s going to be busy…” and we’re seated somewhere we weren’t happy with. Most tables were empty and nobody else was waiting to be seated, so it didn’t seem busy enough for that remark. We were approached by another waiter who asked if we wanted him to take our order or if we wanted to submit it online, so we decided on ordering online for a more private, relaxed meal. Merely two minutes later, a second waitress came over and asked the exact same thing, but also brought water to our table. After our food arrived (mozzarella sticks, side salad, honey mustard chicken wrap), which was delicious and satisfying (which is why I gave a 2 star rating and not 1), we were checked on at least three times by different waiters to see if the food was okay - it was almost as if there was no communication between staff. As our day had been really quite difficult and exhausting, this became progressively more frustrating. One waitress came up to us to ask us how our food was, we replied “All good” and she continued to ask if we needed anything else or another drink, when we clearly already said “all good”. As we were eating, it looked like all wait staff had nothing better to do than watch us like a hawk so I felt a bit awkward and was itching to finish and go. I am SO glad we paid online, because we didn’t have to interact with any more staff as we left. All in all, great food but not...

Unfortunately my review is similar to my last review of Eastlands store last month. I went in last night with a couple friends. I ordered nachos here on my first visit months ago as I'd had a good dish at eastland and fell in love, it was great, square rounded amazing tortilla chips (best I've ever had) with salsa, sour cream, avo and pulled beef which Doncaster put way more beef than Eastland so it was a good proper meal I was excited to order again here. Like my last visit to Eastland, noticed a big difference in the dish, all piled in one heap the tortilla chips were different, thick and not great, the toppings were prepared much chunkier, Eastland had a bunch of long big slices of capsicum and onion all over it making it difficult to dip and eat with the chips so at Doncaster last night I opted to not have onion or capsicum unticking the box. I ended up receiving a dish with no sauce and the amount of beef I got was deplorable, about 3 big chunks plus a chunk of fat, it wasn't all nicely pulled shredded like previous times, I had to get a knife and fork to cut up the meat so I could eat it with the chips as the big pieces made the dish difficult to consume. There was also this thick cheese sauce that seemed like it came out of a bottle. Was pretty sad , I thought it was just Eastlands store but seems like TGI Friday's has completely changed this dish and absolutely ruined it across the franchise, I won't be ordering this again. As suggested to Eastland maybe the tgi team can re assess the way this nacho dish eats because it used to be amazing and now it's...