The Canadian Brewhouse — Restaurant in Lethbridge

My parents and I attended for dinner on Sunday, July 4, 2021. With the recent loosening of in-person dining restrictions, this was intended to be a special, celebratory occasion, however it proved to be anything but. As a direct result of the abject failure of the staff to meet the requirements of their position, it was instead the single worst dining experience I have ever had.

While both the service and food quality were moderate at best, this is not the primary issue at hand. Shortly after we arrived another large party was seated near us on the rooftop patio and was subsequently joined by two other patrons who were already present. This combined group, aided and abetted by the unprofessional and unacceptable behavior of the staff, proceeded to disrupt the dining experience of ourselves and everyone else on the patio. The group in question proceeded to consume a vast, varied and wholly inappropriate quantity of alcohol over an alarmingly short period. This led to many, if not all, members of the party becoming noticeably intoxicated and to conduct themselves in a manner that was, to vastly understate the issue, not appropriate in a public setting. While I understand and appreciate that the recent restrictions related to in-person dining have been considerable and have likely prompted the need to re-allocate various portions of the building, these restrictions have now lifted and the establishment is clearly divided into two separate, distinct areas: a bar and a restaurant. While none of the observed behaviour would be considered in any way appropriate even in a bar, it is made all the more egregious by the fact that it occurred in the restaurant portion of the establishment, early on a Sunday evening. This incident was all the more alarming due to the fact that it was compounded, aided and implicitly sanctioned by the actions of the staff who continued to serve ever more alcohol to this group well beyond the point where they had become visibly intoxicated.

This unfortunate incident culminated in one member of the group vomiting on the floor of the patio in the middle of several other tables at which other patrons, including ourselves, were seated.

The above incident, in which multiple patrons were served to, and well past, the point of intoxication, and one patron was served to the point of vomiting in your establishment, is clearly and obviously a completely unacceptable way to operate any establishment, let alone one that claims on its website to want to make patrons “feel like [they’re] right at home”. I assure you, this was not how I felt.

An additional lesser, but still serious, issue is related to the practice of using a loud “bullhorn” or “siren”-like device in your restaurant to celebrate the purchase and consumption of certain mixed drinks. From what I observed and experienced, this practice consists of playing a loud, blaring noise over the restaurant speakers to instruct the purchasers of certain drinks that it is time to consume them and to encourage them to do so in a celebratory fashion. This practice is obnoxious, disruptive and disrespectful to every other patron in the establishment. It is unacceptable that the actions of one party would require the entire establishment to be subjected this invasive practice. When this issue was brought to the attention of one of the staff, after having been subjected to it multiple times, she responded that it was “a bit of fun”. While this may have been true for the party whose purchase initiated the practice, it most assuredly was not “fun” for the remainder of your patrons. Furthermore, that fact that this practice, celebrating and encouraging the consumption of large quantities of alcohol in rapid succession, was employed in the serving of already intoxicated patrons is troubling to...

My boyfriend and I decided we would try the new Brewhouse restaurant for our date night this week. We got there and requested the patio, and weren't surprised it was full, so we got seated upstairs and put on a waiting list for a patio table. We ordered drinks and were almost ready to order food when our server came over with the good news that a table on the patio was now available for us! We excitedly took our drinks over to our new table and proceeded to order our food. While waiting and chatting we unfortunately spot a girl working that we both used to work with at a previous restaurant. I say it was unfortunate to see her because of how she treated me at this other establishment as my manager. She used to bully me for reasons I still don't understand today, and try her best to make my work experience as horrible as it could be, for the sake of getting a laugh out of it with some of the other employees who were friends of hers. She has some kind of management position at Brewhouse because she was walking around quality checking tables and such, until she came over to our table. My boyfriend and I hoped that she would just stop by and say hello and move on since we were trying to enjoy our evening together, but of course that couldn't happen. Once she's at our table she starts spewing drama about the previous restaurant we worked at to my boyfriend, explaining why she doesn't work there anymore, and going on and on talking fouley of the whole establishment in general. During the whole cringe worthy conversation she said some very disrespectful things to me as well until I told her that we are on a date and would prefer to not listen to her drama. She then went on to say she just wanted to say "hi" then walked away. The way she acted made us uncomfortable to the point that we considered leaving because I was almost in tears. But we already placed our food order so we decided we would quickly eat and then leave. Thankfully our food came out really fast, but we weren't too impressed with it. We would have said something there but we didn't want to complain and have to interact with that manager again. We were pretty upset that what we thought would be a fun date, was anything but...

I booked the patio upstairs on March 14th for 20-30 people for a University Graduation celebration happening on May 31- plenty of notice. The Request was for Rooftop Patio and the manager (at the time-John Pogorzelski) assured me as long as it wasn’t raining it was good. He moved on from his position in early May but CC’d me and the new manager (Gordon Gladue) in an email so Gordon was in the loop. On May 23rd, I sent Gordon an email confirming all the details and the fact that the sun was shining and forcasted for the 31st that the patio should be an go- but I never received a response. I drove to Lethbridge (2 hours away) on May 25th and had lunch there and proceeded to ask a waitress about my upcoming reservation because I didn’t receive a response from the manager Gordon. She went to the computer and was shocked to see there was no reservation in the system for me!!! What??!!!! Anyways…. she added me in right then ( thank goodness there was room) and she was very apologetic. I assured her it wasn’t her fault and thanked her 😊

Fast forward 1 week to Graduation day! Show up to the restaurant where we are all seated in the corner of the restaurant (not even sitting together) and I am upset!!! It’s sunny why aren’t we on the patio as I had reserved 2 months ago? My waitress AMY COPEGOG was INCREDIBLE!!! She could sense my frustrations and she dropped everything to start moving tables around to accommodate 24 people!!! She was AWESOME!! 👏 She could see I had balloons and pictures to place around what was supposed to be all of us sitting at the same table and she did it! She made it work and we all ended up having a great time and were able to socialize with everyone. Amy also took all of our orders, and she even remembered all of our names while she served and chatted with us! Amy is the Reason that our celebration turned out as good as it did- Thank you AMY COPEGOG👏👏 Your manager Gordon dropped the ball but you picked it up and saved the day!! I give AMY’s...