The Fringe Café — Restaurant in Vancouver

Theft by waitress.

This occurred March 24, 2023.

My friends and I went to this pub during our yearly pub crawl (The Fringe was our 4th pub). Half of our friends were pretty intoxicated, while the other half including me were only tipsy. When it came time to pay our bill, our waitress (a caucasian lady with a lot of piercings) thanked us for coming, and told us that we wouldn’t need to tip whatsoever. So we thanked her for her kindness and one by one began to pay. While i was paying i noticed that the bill’s total was much higher than i anticipated. However, i didn’t think too much about it and payed. After we all payed our share of the bill, i discussed with 4 of my friends, and we all noticed that the total was unusually high.

We used our phones calculator and later found out that the waitress added a ~40-50% tip to each of our bills without telling us.

We had a party of 7 people, but this was definitely not a “mandatory gratuity” type of thing. An undisclosed tip of this amount was the waitress stealing from 7 guys she assumed were all too drunk to notice.

The drinks were great, the vibes were great, and even the service was great. For all these reasons i truly want to go back. However knowing that certain employees of The Fringe are thiefs, and will exploit your intoxication is...

Horrible place. Friend went here for their birthday. The service was horrible. They raised the volume so high I couldn't even think and we could not talk.

When I asked them nicely to please turn the music down, so my friend could talk to her friends during her birthday, they barely acknowledged me as a person. I then asked them for my drink, saying that I had gotten up twice to ask and it had been nearly 30 minutes. They were rude and confrontational. They then ruined my friends birthday party by forcing us to leave to punish me for having commented on the service.

I still feel badly for my friend celebrating her party when nobody did anything wrong. Even if they had an issue with my asking, ruining her party with their aggression and horrible attitude was inexcusable.

I sincerely hope they go out...

I’m visiting Vancouver from Montreal, where I live. Came by here with a friend after biking down to the beach for a swim. As soon as we entered the bartender asked us for ID. I am 36 and my friend is 39. I didn’t have my wallet with me as I didn’t want to leave it on the beach while swimming. My friend suggested I could maybe show a photo of my ID on my phone and the bartender basically sneered and said no way.

I understand that people are a lot more zealous about this stuff in BC. The issue is treating us like idiots for even coming in. No apology or explanation whatsoever, just got a super rude, distainful denial of service that was the equivalent of “F- off”. It felt like interacting with a hostile border security cop.

No thanks!!

Had zero issues at the next bar...