Zodiac Bar — Restaurant in Christchurch

On May 09th, 2025, we stopped by this bar and restaurant for a few drinks to unwind after a busy week. When we arrived, the place was very quiet, with hardly any customers. As a result, the staff were exceptionally friendly and welcoming, valuing us and our business due to limited customer options.

However, as the hours passed, more customers began to flood in for drinks and dining, and that's when everything took a turn for the worse. A front-of-house employee, a slim white guy with a ponytail, started timing us on how long we could stay at our table, claiming it had a reservation. I noticed his demeanor change he began to focus more on the larger groups arriving, likely because he anticipated they would spend more money than us, a party of two. We understand how the entertainment industry operates and recognize these techniques.

Having already spent a few hundred dollars, we decided to order dinner as well, as we were enjoying our time there. Before we could place our meal order, the same employee informed us that we could only stay for another 30 minutes. Unfortunately, he seemed to expect us to order and eat our food within that brief time frame. We didn’t go out to rush through our meal; we wanted to take our time and enjoy our drinks and food. If we had wanted a quick meal, we could have just stayed home.

Feeling disappointed and disheartened, I approached the same employee to express my concerns. After that interaction, we walked out, we decided to leave and take our business elsewhere to spend our money.Thank you very much for ruining our afternoon and evening.

Once again, I cannot stress this enough to business owners and their staff, "We, the customers, are paying for your salaries and the owner's entire financial expenses. The reality is very simple, it's not rocket science. No customers mean no income, which can lead to business closures and no jobs for you." What would you do then.?? Unfortunately, it seems that many business owners and their staff don’t grasp this concept.

FYI, nowadays, where competition is fierce, patrons have countless options when deciding where to spend their money. They dont care about you or your business. Customers who encounter disrespect, dissatisfaction, or mistreatment will quickly seek alternatives by moving on to the next business/company. Its a must for you to be very cautious and mindful of how you treat your customers.

Furthermore,  It’s essential for business owners to understand that customers are your bread and butter, they are crucial to the survival and prosperity of your operations. Again, it all depends on customer satisfaction.

We don’t think we will be rushing back to your bar anytime soon, nor will we be recommending it to our networks. Good luck and all the best. Given the competitive entertainment industry nowadays, we wish you all the best, and we hope you can survive. You are fortunate to receive 2...

Edit: The owner’s response below has been to publicly call me a liar… shows their level of respect to customers. I would love to request a copy of this CCTV footage which would absolutely prove the conversation I had with the manager. All of my family were with me and none “apologised for my behaviour”, in fact we all said afterwards to each other we’ll never be back. Show us the footage Zodiac?

For anyone else looking to dine, avoid Zodiac as they clearly have complete disrespect for customers who have any sort of feedback.

—————————————— We dined tonight, and overall the service was a bit poor. One of the waitresses didn’t know the names of the food she was bringing to serve us, and it took ages for simple drinks to come to the table.

The kicker though was when we got to the till and there was a “miscellaneous food” item for $15, which turned out to be some tofu we had asked to add to the truffle fried rice dish. Bear in mind, this item is already $26.50 for a fried rice, so the total came to a whopping $41.50 for a bowl of fried rice.

I explained to the restaurant manager that $15 for a few small pieces of tofu was outrageous, and that when we ordered the dish as it marks it as being able to be made vegan I had simply asked the server if we could have it without meat, and they had responded “would you like tofu instead?” and not mentioned any extra charge. His explanation was simply that they charge between $15-$19 to add meat to the rice anyway (imagine paying $45.50 for fried rice!!) and that since this was a similar request the charge reflected that. I don’t know if you’ve compared the price of meat and tofu recently, but $15 for about 100g of tofu is insane.

All of this conversation was had while the restaurant manager was half on the phone, not even bothering to give us his full attention. He offered to reduce the charge slightly and when I explained I had already paid his response was “Well my name is Adam, next time you’re in I’ll buy you a drink”

Adam - I’ve worked in hospitality for 6+ years and that is nowhere near an example of acceptable customer service or complaint resolution. We will not be back to Zodiac, and will be recommending others save their dollars too by dining...

We came from a lunch on Saturday with a group of friends for my partners shared birthday, we thought we would stop in and have a round or two of drinks. After being initially stopped and questioned on whether we had been drinking or been at a bottomless brunch we all responded "no we have just finished lunch" we were told if we want any drinks we would all have to go to the bar and order there. We knew we were a larger group and we all ordered margaritas (as it was a celebration) so we said to the bartenders that we weren't in a rush and there was no issue if they couldn't serve us all at the same time or straight away - as understanding as we could as we know the strain everyone is under due to COVID - the bar manager was incredibly rude to us all even stating we clearly hadn't been bartenders before as we would've been more wise to make a booking - even if its just for a round of drinks. They then proceeded to serve us without saying anything to us or even speaking. If we hadn't already started paying for the drinks we would've taken our business elsewhere. Walked up to the bar above afterwards and was greeted with absolute pleasure and helpfulness - might want to take a few tips of customer service from their surrounding competitors...not that it seemed they wanted customers or our...