Po-ke — Restaurant in Calgary

TL;DR : This place has TERRIBLE MANAGEMENT and clearly DOES NOT CARE about their customers. The owner and manager CINDY NGUYEN DOES NOT KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE! REVOKED MY COMPLIMENTARY BOWLS WITHOUT NOTIFYING ME. Passes blame for mistakes onto others and insists we were in the wrong

LONGER VERSION: Okay so I know some of you have read the 11 person Halloween get together, here is the FULL STORY of what happened. Some friends came over to celebrate Halloween and we decided to order food. I didn't know at the time but almost everyone decided to order from this particular restaurant. There was still 1.5 hours until they were closed so we thought we would still be enough time and ingredients for us. About 15 minutes after we placed our order we received a call from Po-ke saying "we don't have enough white rice, is it ok if we use brown rice instead?". We all agree that it is ok and tell the employee that it's ok. At around 8:45 pm (15 minutes before they close) out food arrived and as we distribute the bowls we notice that ALL of the bowls are BARELY HALF FULL and that some bowls are COMPLETELY WRONG. we call the restaurant to complain and the employee notified us that he will pass the message on to the owner/manager (Cindy) when she arrives after closing. We all eat the bowls in the meantime since we are all hungry (we were still hungry after eating because, again, the bowls were less than half full) and I receive a call from Cindy at around 9:10 pm. We talk and I express my discontent with the way the order was prepared (I did say that the time it took to prepare was ok since I understand that it was a large order). She continues to PASS THE BLAME onto Doordash since we ordered through them and asks if we still had the bowls so we can "return them" and that we might have been able to have them "corrected" if we still had them in hand. I told her "no. We were all hungry so we ate them all. She continued to insist that there was enough protein in all the bowls (I've eaten there multiple times before and the amount was far less than what it usually was) and insisted it was only the rice that was lacking. We eventually reach the agreement that we would receive 3 complimentary large bowls to make up for the incident. THE NEXT DAY I receive a call from Cindy saying "your friends are RUINING my reputation." She tried to convince me to have my friends take their bad reviews down or we would not recieve the complimentary bowls. I explained that I didnt have that authority over what my friends do and it is implied that we would still get the complimentary bowls. NOW I finally found time to go pick up my free bowls and I feel like giving them another chance, so I go in and ask for them. But I find out that CINDY HAS REVOKED MY COMPLIMENTARY BOWLS WITHOUT EVEN NOTIFYING ME because some of my friends wrote in their reviews that they would not come back. I will iterate that I MYSELF NEVER SAID SUCH A THING. Overall I am completely dissapointed by this establishment mainly because of the way it is run. I would not suggest eating here even if it was the only restaurant in town. Thank you for reading this long post (some minor details were excluded due to length but if you contact me (find me on Facebook or something) wanting ALL the details I will gladly provide it) Edit: in response to Cindy's reply, like I said, I have no control over what my friends do. It is NOT defamation if it is their honest opinion of your establishment after the incident that occured. You are implying that ALL bad reviews are not valid even of reviews are PURELY OPINION BASED. I was perfectly ok with having the 3 complimentary bowls to resolve the issue before you revoked them so do not say "nothing was to your satisfaction". How is it fair at all when you revoke the bowls based off of my freinds reviews? As for you addressing any issues when they arise, there is a number of bad reviews left from people who I dont know that DID NOT have their...

Decent seafood for Calgary standards (which is quite low), but very poor customer service. If you scroll through the reviews, it's full of PR jargon aimed at solving problems after they arise instead of preventing the problems in the first place. Sure, all restaurants and businesses experience disgruntled customers, but when that business struggles to cease those issues after dozens of occurrences, it sure says a lot about that business. An example of their reaction-based behavior can be found in one of their more recent review replies, and I quote: "You can see from any past review we will address any issues when they arise".

Google reviews (and other public review sources) are meant for clarity, transparency, and to give other people an idea of what they'll experience with a business. Trading the removal of bad reviews for free food does not, and never will, change the experience of new customers, the quality of service, and the attitude of a manager.

It's clear that the manager/owner does not intrinsically care for the customer, or at least cares more about a bunch of fake stars on the internet. I sincerely hope the manager/owner understands that the time and money spent writing replies to reviews and giving away free items is much better spent actually taking care of their customers.

Until I see a significant change to the dynamics of how this restaurant is operated, I see no reason to deal with them in future.

P.S. I expect there will be a lovely copy-pasted message telling me to contact the info email. Either that or a retaliation trying to dispute my claims. I will be gladly...

Not a reflection on the food or the employees, both of which I believe were fantastic. This is a comment on management. We had a filled stamp card ready to redeem for a free poke bowl, only to be told that "there was a new POS system" and that they could no longer accept completed stamp cards. Beyond that, there wasn't much of an explanation or an attempt to compromise. I believe the owner/store manager was there at the time and purposely tried to avoid the situation, although this I cannot be sure of.

I understand that management will make decisions in the best interest of of the business. I am not upset that the stamp cards were cancelled. Business needs change, and sometimes certain initiatives need to be recalled. I am disappointed because there was no attempt to meet halfway or partially compensate a customer that has returned time and time again, just to be met with "we have a new POS system sorry". I've worked in foods long enough (5+ jobs) to understand that they absolutely had the ability to partially discount or comp our $15 poke bowl, but management consciously chose not to. As a side note, I think it would have been nice if they had asked us if we would like to cancel our order, but in the interest of reducing waste we decided not to.

To the kind employees at the counter trying to avoid the awkwardness of this situation, I'm sorry that the owner has stuck you with the responsibility to communicate this change to customers. To the owner or person in charge of the decision, I strongly hope you reconsider your take on not accepting completed stamp cards....