Swiss Chalet — Restaurant in Ontario

I ordered by phone for my family -- a family pack with two packs of fries and two caesar salads. We asked if we could get all white meat, as we have been to other locations that will honour that request. The woman at the call centre taking my order said she would have to contact the restaurant itself and ask. She put me on hold to do so and when she came back, she said the restaurant would do this. Great! I finished my order and paid over the phone and ended the call. The restaurant is a 20 minute drive from my house so you can imagine my frustration when this happened:

When I got home we discovered that we received two white and two dark. We called the restaurant and spoke to the manager, Amanda, who explained that that is how the family pack is served. I know that already. This was a customer request that has been fulfilled several times in the past. We told Amanda that the woman at the call centre put me on hold to call her restaurant to ask if they would give us all white meat and that she told me that the restaurant said yes. Amanda said they never heard from the call centre and so they did nothing wrong, leading me to believe that the call centre lied to me. We told her that the request is on the receipt that came with the food when I picked it up. For this reason, I don't believe the restaurant/Amanda was truthful when she said the restaurant never heard from the call centre. She (or whoever packed the order and brought it out to me) would have seen the request on the same receipt her store gave me. We said that if the restaurant had no intention of fulfilling the request, they should have called us (We are supposed to provide a phone number for a reason, are we not?). When we told her they should have called us if there was an issue, she was silent for quite a while and then finally responded with an attitude-ridden "Okay". We are new to this area. For the first time ordering from this location, it has not left a good impression and I would be reluctant to order from here in future. From my experience, and based on what I've read from some of the other reviews here, I'd say their customer service needs work.

Oh yeah, and our caesar salads came without dressing. They included the cheese, croutons, and bacon, but forgot the caesar salad dressing for our caesar salads so we had to make do with what we had -- balsamic vinaigrette (the hell if I'm driving another 40 minutes total just for dressing), which...

Not sure this particular location even deserves a 1 star rating after the exceptionally poor dine in service we received on Thursday August 4th !!

We spend every weekend in Orillia throughout the summer, and routinely stop to dine after our 1 1/2 hour drive up from Toronto. We have ordered take out from this location a number of times throughout the last few years and found the food to be enjoyable.

On our drive up on Thursday August 4th it was a little later (7:00PM) and we decided to dine in. We were seated almost immediately and the perky and pleasant waitress commented to us that we were lucky, the crowd had finished up and there were very few patrons left in the restaurant.

I ordered and quickly received a soup, salad and soft drink.. My wife ordered a coleslaw and soft drink.

With very few customers in the restaurant, we patently waited for over 45 minutes for our main course all the while being ignored by wait staff. We finally decided that we could wait no more. We both got up from the table and asked our waitress to give us the bill for what had been delivered to our table. She said that she would have the Manager adjust our bill and remove what had not been delivered.

We were both astonished when neither Management staff or Waitress approached us to offer a reason for the delay or an apology. Our astonishment continued when the waitress presented an adjusted bill that the manager had approved for $24.00 for soup, salad, coleslaw and 2 soft drinks much of which we never drank or ate while waiting for the rest of our meal.

We have always enjoyed dining at other Swiss Chalet locations in the past, but have been soured by the extreme price increases over the last while and poor service endured at this location.

It may do well for management and staff to understand that consumers / customers always have other choices.

EDIT: We were happy to receive a response form the Owner / Manager with regard to the poor review that we left. It was unfortunate that the response was less than satisfactory. The offer from management to make our visit a little less panful was a JOKE. It appears that the response from the owner / management is just lip service to appear that they are concerned about poor reviews

Once again, It may do well for management and staff to understand that we as consumers / customers always have other choices. My choice next time will be another...

NEW Worst customer service! I tried your location back in July …. Food was disgusting!!! For over 20 years I have dined at Swiss chalet in many cities… since Shirley temples an treasure chest was a thing. I gave it another chance ! This location kills the whole entire virtue of what Swiss chalet really is! So what ticked my hat today …. I ordered an online order for nearly $200 …. I tried paying online using my credit card… no luck so I pressed pay at door. 1 hr later delivery comes they don’t have a machine. They then waste 10 minutes of my time delivery lady is adamant as if I don’t have cash she cannot leave my order! Worst customer service and if this was my restaurant you would lose your job! She wanted me to call customer service and wait on hold to process my credit card. … while my food is in the bag in the cold and she also swears the food wouldn’t get cold. After calling the store she request I can do e-transfer unfortunately that payment doesn’t work for me …… the lady said she can’t leave the food with me. To know you would waste 197.99 including the tip we put is despicable. As you can see confetti cake was ordered….. happy birthday to us! Thank you for ruining our dinner. You could of took my credit info and done it for me as a physical card was available! Maybe it saved me the upset stomach as last time! Check my reviews! I am one customer that is fair and love to give business who deserve it fantastic reviews! Every restaurant in orillia knows my address and we always tip. I was saved the nightmare as I watched the delivery walk off with $197.99 worth of food . . I really wanted to pay an enjoy something at least !!! I usually re-season the chicken lol...