Buffet Royale Sherwood Park — Restaurant in Sherwood Park

I wish there is a ZERO star option for me to rate this restaurant. What a horrible customer service experience we ever had in our life! I strongly advise all of you NOT to HOST any event at this restaurant. There is a very poor communication among the management team. We started getting in touch with them in early April 2022 for my husband's Birthday& Retirement party to be held on May 28th for approximately 55 people. We had no choice but had to talk to 3 different people: Assistant Manager, Manager & then the Owner. The Owner seemed to be very accomodating & prompted to answer our calls until we gave them $100 deposit on April 9th. The service then started to go downhill. She doesn't return my call. The Assistant Manager & Manager are so moody to deal with. Make the story very short as there is not much room for me to write,  we found out on May 15th from the Manager that we have to pay "$400" room rental fee which was never disclosed to us verbally. We then carefully looked at the 2-page reservation sheets requested by us a wk before and realized someone wrote on there "$150/hr to extend hrs past 9pm room rental fee". We thought all along the $150/hr was referred to the rental fee. The reason we were willing to pay for the extra 2 hrs from 9pm -11pm was to make sure we would have enough time for my husband to cut his birthday/retirement cake & to mingle with our guests as dinner starts at 7pm. Please note that they will still shut down their buffet at 9pm & we would buy drinks from them until 11pm. All other prices were mentioned on the Reservation sheets including the 15% mandatory tip but the "$400" room rental fee was no where to be seen! To me, this is clear to be an unacceptable hidden charge. At that point, I told the Manager to stop right there and get back to us about the extra $400 they want to charge us before we discuss any further. She then told us to come back tomorrow afternoon at 3pm as she should get the answer from the Owner by then. We got there the next day. She sat us down and immediately told us rudely that she has 10 to 15 mins for us. I asked her if she got the answer for us about the extra $400 fee and she said no. She has no time. Lol. She looked all uptight, cranky &  complained to us that she came in to work today and found out there is Consumer Choice Award event with over 100 people right now (in the room we were going to use) & that the Assistant Manager didn't tell her about. Apparently, they both take turn to manage another Buffet Royale in Edmonton besides this location in Sherwood Park. I was furious at this point as she was really wasting our time and kept ignoring the fact that if there is $400 rental fee, we wont proceed & we will go somewhere else. I told her to get back to us by the end of the day. She then called my husband the same evening and said the Owner feels their restaurant is not a good "fit" for us & wants to cancel our booking and suggests us to rent a hall instead & will refund our $100 deposit.  She obviously bad mouth'ed to the Owner about us and without reaching out to us to hear the other side of the story, the Owner blindly listens to her staff & cancels our booking ....10 days before our party. It is such a shame for them to be willing to lose thousands of dollars in one night while other restaurants happily want our business. They expect 15% tips but the Manager refuses one simple request (which already agreed by the Assistant Manager) to line up the 2 tables which are only 1 foot apart, & take the third table away as it is in the way. She claims it is too much work for her and she wont have time to do that ! I would like to know how they get to keep their Consumer Choice Award all these years. Does it get reviewed based on "unbiased data" on an annual basis ?......as they truly dont deserve this...

Today we came here to celebrate our daughter’s 18 th birthday. There was 8 of us total for supper and when I called to make a reservation I was informed that there is a guaranteed 15% gratuity with 8 or more people. This was not the first time we have been here but it is the first time I was so very disappointed with not only the service or lack there of but the whole atmosphere. Ice cream machine was low and no one seemed to care the toppings for the ice cream were also low or none and even the manger didn’t seem to care that we not once but twice had to take our dirty dishes up to the bar so there was room at our table. I am truly appalled at how we were treated tonight. It was supposed to have been a special occasion and mile stone and we were left with a very bad taste in our mouth. We don’t mind giving a tip if it is earned but in all honesty. Our waitress tonight took our order for our drinks. It took what seemed like forever to get them then we had to keep asking other waitresses who were walking by if we could get refills. Our waitress came by at the end of the evening as we were leaving and asked us if we wanted her to take a picture of those of us who were still there and my oldest daughter said quite abruptly NO. we would have loved to have been asked when we first sat down and told our waitress it was a special occasion for our daughter who turned 18 but it felt like she really didn’t care. I even had to ask her about the achoholic drinks as the last time we were there there was a Bellini drink. She then said oh yes that is our special drink we still have it. I had told so many people about what a great place to eat this place was and now I take all that back. Tips are earned and this waitress we had tonight did not deserve the 15% tip she got from us. We work hard for our money and I truly feel that there was no give a damn from anyone who was working there tonight including the manager. Yes we were a party of 8 and yes there were a few of our party who ordered an alcoholic drink. So to think we spent just about 400.00 on our meals and the gratuity for what, poor service and very poor representation of this restaurant. You all should ashamed of yourselves for not making sure your customers who pay your wage are happy. Just my personal opinion but we won’t be back. I would truly love to speak with someone from head office about this and how we were treated. Even your manager whom my husband spoke to when he went to pay the bill didn’t care about how we were treated. If I could give no stars I would but I had to give 1 star so I could post...

EDIT: After posting the following review I was contacted by corporate. We've since discovered that some things have been changed. We were compensated for our unfavorable experience and we will try buffet Royale Sherwood park again to see how the changes have affected the treatment and service we receive.

Our party of 5 went in tonight for a celebratory dinner. For $36/person, it turned out to be a bit of a dud.

The food was okay(not the quality we used to get pre covid) until members of my family had the chocolate ice cream. It was sour or rotten and tasted disgusting. Went from the spoon, to my mouth, to the napkin. No way was I swallowing it!

When we mentioned it to our server, she immediately notified the manager who came over to our table, she was not apologetic in the least and insisted that she watched both the chocolate and vanilla ice cream get changed just hours before(implying and leaving us to feel like we were wrong to mention it and like we had no idea what we were talking about). She went to taste it and told our server it was gross and would be changed again in the morning, but failed to come back to issue an apology and when our server inquired about a discount for our inconvenience and unfortunate experience, the manager flat out refused.

The manager appears to have no idea what good customer service or accountability are and in my opinion shouldn't be managing anything where customer satisfaction needs to be in the fore front. The only bright spot in our experience tonight was our server Christina. She was very attentive and apologetic for the unfortunate experience we had tonight. She is AMAZING and deserves a raise/promotion as she's the reason you got any stars tonight.

This Buffet Royale location used to be my "go to" pre-covid but my past two post-covid experiences in the last 30 days have left a bad taste in my mouth and it has unfortunately become my "go no...