Swiss Chalet — Restaurant in Waterloo

Final update: Thank you to the business development manager who committed to making this right and for resolving the problem once and for all. I am grateful to you.

DISASTER - large group order

I work at a large local institution. I ordered (ahead of time, working directly with the restaurant via email) 20 meals for an end of year holiday lunch. To avoid delivery hassles (our institution is difficult to navigate) I picked the order up. I did everything I could to avoid any issues with the meals, logistics, etc.

When I went to pick up the food, there were three large red bags brought out to me (on time) and an employee graciously helped me take them to my car. I asked the employee if she needed help taking the bags back in and she said no I'm good have a great day. I got into my car and I left. Once I got back to the workplace, we discovered that many items were missing from the meal - drinks, salads, cranberry sauce and chocolates for the festive specials, butter for the rolls, cutlery...the list goes on and on. I tried phoning the restaurant for two hours - only getting a busy signal. I even called the main Swiss Chalet customer service line, but they were unable to help. I hoped that someone could drive the items over to us (our lunch hour is only an hour long and the distance from my workplace to my parking lot is 10 minutes - by the time you add all of the back and forth, the hour and lunch would be up). Additionally, it was the restaurant's fault, so they should have brought the items to us. Later I found that a message was left on my office phone, even though I clearly stated multiple times via email to contact my cell phone, accusing me of forgetting to take the items. I never saw those items - only 3 red bags were brought out to me that contained individually bundled and bagged, and labelled meals. It was the restaurant's responsibility to ensure I had everything when I left. Someone should have either called me on my cell phone like I had asked, or an employee should have driven those items to me. This was our holiday lunch, and it was ruined. People paid for items that were never received.

I finally got a hold of a manager that day, and I was told she would work with the general manager to come up with a solution. I have received no response, and no resolution from anyone to date. There has been zero effort to correct this situation on the part of management.

In this day in age people do not have money to just give away...shame on you to the management of the Swiss Chalet at the Boardwalk. Our festive specials were not "festive," and to date you have made no effort to...

If i could give this location a 0 stars i would. It took for ever to take our order and an eternity to get our food. We had to ask for our appetizers after about a 20 minute wait, while we were eating those at least 4 tables walked out as they were tired of waiting. When our food finally arrived, to me it tasted watery moist but no flavor...We were seated at approximately 6:45 and didn't get out tell 8:40 an this with no after dinner chat. The booth were were seated at was not cleaned, there was sticky stuff on the table had to ask server to clean it. The people in the booth behind us heard asking for our appetizer and complaining and when they left, told us of their terrible experience from cold fries that they sent back to their extremely long wait and to order and get food. They said they would never come back to this location, and like us was the first time they had been at this location . In conclusion I do not recommend this Swiss Chalet

.2023..A Year Later What a differance Only went back because we were at the Boardwalk Medical Building. The service was excellent and the food was even better. Probably the best Swiss Chalet food l have had in a long time. Tables were cleaned off and wipe down with in minutes of a customer leaving. What l think was the manager was even cleaning tables, when the servers got busy.

How my first review had something to do with this....but l call it like l see it. Never did take you up on the 2 free dinners from a year ago for bad customer service. BUT My wife an l swore we never come back. Sure glad l did give it another try.

Thanks for a great meal and...

Unfortunately I am left to add my review here as they did not meet my expectations when I called the store. 1) ordered for a specific time (5:50) - arrived 20 min early (thankfully we just got home a minute before or else it would have stayed outside getting colder. 2) they placed the package in front of the door and we could not open our door to get the food (had to go through garage), 3) fries were cold, 4) they forgot the all the buns and chalet sauce, 5) vegetable medley’s broccoli was brown and yellow, 6) called them to complain - all they said was sorry and said buns and sauce can be there in a few minutes (I said don’t bother too late now) - asked what they could do for us and that was it - bring us the missing food. We had a bad experience back in early December as well - usually good food/service - but this is two in a row at this store. Not sure if it is under new ownership/management- but I will NOT be coming back to this store (unfortunately since it is only 2 km away).

NOTE: After posting this review and sending the form, Swiss Chalet has reached out to me for an acceptable form of settlement (although I am not 100% I will use it to be honest) - my only suggestion is that it should not come to posting a complaint etc - my expectation is the store should deal with it immediately. So my feedback is - I know the customer sometimes can be a pain and it is not easy - but if you offer some sort of solution (that benefits the customer) you will get them...