AlMacs Buffet — Restaurant in Niagara Falls

Decided to try their breakfast as we didn’t have breakfast at the hotel and wanted something affordable and quick, well… affordable if you don’t get drinks… and quick minus the lineup if it’s busy… They request you lineup outside and they take you in when a table is available, which I assume is because the entrance doesn’t have a traditional restaurant lobby. Annoying if it’s hot and you gotta stand in the sun… they also don’t take names down, so you can’t wait in the car as you may lose your spot in line. Inside was very hot and humid… people kept coming inside just to be told to lineup outside so that probably didn’t help since the door was constantly opening and closing lol. But they perhaps need better AC… haha Once you are seated you can hop right to the buffet, or order drinks through your server. This is where my biggest issue is with this place… they don’t have complementary water… what restaurant doesn’t serve water?? 😭 To make it worse… if you want water, they have bottles but they are $3.99 PER BOTTLE?! Not even big bottles either… just standard 500ml… so if you want “refills” you are paying per bottle which is insane to me. The sodas are $4.99 but at least you can get free refills… my brother got chocolate milk and it was $5.49 for a small glass worth… Like Niagara is known for being expensive, it’s a tourist place after all, but not having free water and drinks being this expensive is insane to me.The buffet prices are reasonable for breakfast and dinner if you don’t get drinks… it’s what you’d expect.

Breakfast consists of waffles, french toast, pancakes, bacon, sausages, jello, yogurt, etc. for some reason the whole time we were there this morning, they had run out of pancakes and didn’t restock them at all, which is odd but oh well. The food was okay, bacon was super salty and the waffles were super sweet as they must love coating everything in heaps of powdered sugar… because there was so much on the waffles it was crazy lol. Also, the bacon was soaking in its own grease… it seems when they transfer the old food to the new tray, they dump it in… like use tongs so you don’t keep transferring more grease!! I should have taken a picture because holy cow it was crazy.

Overall, it’s what you’d expect for a cheap buffet… it’s not great, but not the worst… just be aware that drinks are where they get you, the price is great until you realize how expensive drinks are and that water isn’t even free here. The server was also not upfront about the water which is weird, I feel like it’s pretty important to note when asking for drink orders that the water isn’t free… once I asked since I’d been here before and it wasn’t free, then she was quick to mention that it’s bottled water only and that it’s $3.99 for a bottle. Just strange it wasn’t mentioned and I had to ask…

If you’re looking for something quick and cheap, it’s not bad. But don’t set your expectations...

AlMost the Go-To place for breakfast

A good breakfast place with nice service. With COVID affecting so many food places, this place offers all you can eat breakfast/dinner where the food is SERVED TO YOU. That’s amazing. Especially in a buffet, I could only imagine the amount of germs lingering around the buffet table with people getting up to get their own food.

However, with this business model comes a couple of shortcomings. Food waste and customer satisfaction being 2 of them.

Food waste: Our food was delivered in about 3-4 minutes after seating. Fast service, and our server brought us everything we could imagine AND MORE. But the “and more” part is where room for opportunity appears. Although we’re given an abundance of food - from hash browns, sausages, bacon, pancakes, waffles, AND more - so much of it is wasted because we’re given more than we expected. With almost 50% of our food going to the garbage that adds up to increased food waste costs that can be avoided.

Customer Satisfaction: I understand the marketing pull of 7.99 AYCE breakfast. It’s amazing value for the amount of food you’re ALLOWED to eat. But that comes at a price: exactly $2.99 for 500mL water bottles and $3.49 for bottomless coffee. Many customers come in with the expectation of paying 7.99 for everything - food, drinks, and good service. You have 2/3 included but let’s come up with solutions to change that business model.

Solution: Food waste - print a checklist menu of items customers can order to reduce food waste costs. This would allow customers to come in, order a drink, and then have their checklist filled out with their orders. Example: (3) hash browns, (4) sausages, etc. Reduce food waste cost and increase efficiency by allowing waiters/waitresses to focus on filling out the correct order rather than guessing in order to make the customer happy. Customer satisfaction - reduce prices for water bottles. The added cost of having $2.99 for a small water bottle reduces the amount of money going towards my tip because it’s an added expense I didn’t account for. If water bottles were $1.99 or included in a premium breakfast pricing model of $9.99 I, as a customer, would understand what I’m paying for which would incline me to tip more money to my server rather than tipping money for a drink after a full meal.

Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, AlMacs is a GOOD breakfast place. But it’s AlMost a GREAT breakfast place. I encourage you to meet with your owners and make two small optimizations, and you go from an average rating or 2-3 stars to an upward trend of 4-5 stars with more customers coming back for the...

So, I have very mixed feelings on this restaurant, but for the most part, This buffet is not good in the slightest.

I went at Dinner time, so per person it was $26.99 CAD plus tax, which is not a terrible price for a buffet. But ultimately that isn't the problem. This restaurant is one of the only places that I have dined in at that does not provide service water for their customers, which quite frankly is insane to me. Even more ridiculous though is that the bottles of water they do provide are $3.99.

Their pricing on water especially and not providing service water is very predatory in nature, and despite the lower price point, it just makes me wish I went to a completely different restaurant and paid a slightly higher price for my meal.

The food itself is nothing special, about what you would expect from a cheap buffet and so I dont have that many complaints. The main one though is that their selection in meats such as chicken wings, pork ribs and sweet chili chicken were super dry and overcooked, to the point that not having water would make it almost inedible.

My primary complaint however, is regarding the manager of the establishment. She was incredibly unprofessional in the way she handled the situation when confronted by my girlfriends dad about the lack of service water. A situation that only involved the manager and my girlfriends dad, involved me and my girlfriend after we were guilt tripped into eating and paying for our meal because of food waste, and having the gall to talk negatively about my girlfriends father while sitting at a table about 10 feet away from us while we finished our plates to just pay and go home.

The manager is also seemingly not transparent about practices with customers and that is reflected by the servers. Waiting until we had food and sitting down at our table to then tell us that water was not customary, despite us looking through the buffet to determine if it was a good spot to dine in at beforehand. They withheld this information, and it feels very predatory.

In short, Don't go here. There's literally an Applebee's 5 minutes from here. This place is a predatory tourist trap in the most tourist trap town in Ontario. Not worth the 30 bucks per...