IHOP — Restaurant in Calgary

Today for Easter Sunday five of us attended this IHOP location for breakfast. The bill was over 100$ before tip. The food came out hot and fresh which was nice. The restaurant was clean and nice décor. The portion sizes of the food are fairly small considering IHOP is charging $14 dollars for 4 pancakes and $18 for a combo with two pancakes. I ordered 2 of the chocolate pancakes with a combo. There was one small dab of whip cream about the diameter of a little more than a twoonie and a small pile of chocolate chips. The pancakes were small in size. My son's and my Mom had Strawberry and Banana pancakes. Their pancakes had a meager amount of strawberry and banana's. They should be smothered in the ingredients for the price. After all its flour eggs and milk or water to make the pancakes and the topping. Maybe 1.50-2$ at most to make an order that is almost $15, that's a heck of profit margin.

My biggest issue, however was with the service. Our waitress it seems, is there only to do the bare minimum technical part of the job. She took our order brought our food and drinks. For most of the meal the waitress made herself fairly sparse. Not once did she offer a refill on any of our drinks. My Mom ordered tea and it took 10 min after the tea was brought to the table to finally get a small dish of creamer's for the tea. We have made a habit of ordering a water and a pop so that we have enough to drink at restaurants to remedy the usual lack of drink refills. IHOP serves the pop in a small glass filled with ice and they provide the water in an even smaller glass that is probably a kids combo glass. I would doubt there is a can of pop worth of liquid in a glass for about $4. Being cheap on the water speaks volumes. IHOP is not the only restaurant that seems to have a don't volunteer refill policy at almost all costs, but its annoying just the same. Even worse when the waitress isn't around much to ask for any refill. I am sorry, but its not a great option to decide between having a near $4 dollar pop with no refills or just cut that out because you know that service will not be provided. So it seems as a customer you're left with a kid sized glass of water as the option. I should be able to expect better service than that.

As for tipping, what is there to actually tip for? Someone should expect to get 15-20% for bringing my food to the table, something as a customer I am not allowed to do on my own. I don't think that the service we got was a 15-20$+ effort on top of my already 100$+ bill. On top of it took 10 plus minutes after the meal for the waitress to come with the debit machine for us to pay the bill. We ended up tipping 10% which is about 10$ that is so we don't seem like cheap jerks while sending a bit of a message. Ultimately the waitress made about $25/hour on our table to be a glorified food runner.

I am not sure why restaurants like IHOP want to cut corners with there portion sizes and run minimal basic service. I would really like to know where the long term benefit for the restaurant is? In this version, we probably either don't come back often or not at all. In a version were the restaurant provides portion value and attentive service customers come back more frequently. Saving maybe 5$ total in product is worth a single $100+ bill where is maybe 5$ more in product might give your 3 $100+ bill visits and proper tips for your staff.

Ultimately I was disappointed enough that we will probably go somewhere else or make it at home rather give IHOP money for a mediocre...

The worst service I have ever experienced. And no I am not kidding. We called in booked for 5 and called again just to let them know we would be late by 5 mins so they are informed about our arrival (This was me being courteous).

I arrived and no one was at the reception to great us I peeked in so they would know but after waiting got 3-5 mins I walked in since it was less than 50% capacity and found a bunch of empty tables and walked to them made sure that someone would see us and sat down at one of them hoping someone would come to us. I stood up and raised my hand so someone would notice us. Many of them walked by and finally someone approached us and told us the area we were seated in the restaurant was closed. I informed him that we waited and we didn't see anyone at the reception and walked in. His response was "We are very busy". Half of the restaurant was empty and the other half was 50%-60% occupied.

I then went to the other side of the restaurant that was operational and found an empty table amongst the many I could choose from. After sitting down I got approached and was told as to why I was sitting here and I have to wait for someone to serve us. The audacity of the lady was unreal. I informed her about the situation and it was not that I did what I did out of spite it was because there were not sign stating how a person was to be served.

Anyways I asked her if she would want me to go back and wait at the reception. She said "No, you should have waited... we are very busy. I will get someone to serve you" and she walked away.

I understand if a restaurant is busy and they had shortage of staff. Instead I see a bunch of servers walking around and looking but ignoring us.

Finally after all of that since my kids were hungry and we wanted to order my wife asked a server walking by if they could take our order. Instead she was told in a very rude tone that our server would be with us.

Once our server finally arrived we asked the server as to why the staff was so blatantly rude. Asked him if we make a mistake ? Did we actually commit a crime by walking in instead of waiting to be served ? I even apologized. His response left us speechless... he said "Their shift is about to end to they want to go home" and he apologized and we even told him he didn't need to since it was not his fault.

I felt like a criminal who had broken seating commadment of iHOP.

If it wasn't for my kids wanting to eat here... I would have walked away...

As someone who lives in a city that doesn’t have an IHOP, whenever I am travelling I often visit. Today was my first experience in which I was deeply not impressed with my experience. After my party of 2 waited for 8 mins before an employee came to the front; there were a few people ahead of us. We waited for awhile and the server didn’t attend, someone who appeared to be an expo or host took our drink order and shortly after delivered our juice with ice. We didnt see an issue just acknowledged it was odd and moved on. when the sever came to the table approx. after 10 min after we were sat she first of all commented on the ice in our juice as if it was our fault? And then proceeded to take our order, was a bit snarky and argued with me about what I was ordering. The food took longer than usual, the same employee who took our drink order asked what we had ordered so she could check on it in the kitchen. Our server over heard this and was very rude to this younger employee. I do not enjoy seeing workplaces allow disrespect between servers. This is unacceptable. We were minutes away from getting up and leaving until the food arrived. At this point the experience was so bad already we asked for the bill to be delivered as soon as the food came so we didn’t. Experience any further delays. I wanted to say something to our server when paying, however she dropped the machine off and left our table, never returning until we were leaving. Shortly after we left I made a phone call, wanting to speak to a manager, and never got a call back. The employee I spoke to on the phone said the manager on duty was “Busy and would call as soon as possible”. Since I am from out of town I wanted this dealt with today, however this did not happen. Today was a Friday morning (later morning closer to 11) and the servers section didn’t appear to be overly busy, but there were a few tables. I hope management fixes these issues with employees and their attitude and behaviours...