The Potting Shed Tea Room — Restaurant in Chelmsford

LET DOWN BY SERVICE

We arrived to be greeted by only one member of staff that told us she was the only one there and that everyone else was late... She was really nice and sorted our drinks straight away! The problems started when eventually about 15/20 minutes later the other staff turned up. Its clear they are all young and not properly trained in good service. Half our breakfast went to another table, I had to ask twice for an apple juice which was forgotten about at the beginning, our cutlery was filthy and was told by the lad "oh sorry they were from yesterday's pot wash", they then used a napkin to clean the other cutlery before bringing them back over... my bacon was stone cold and took a good 10 minutes to get a new slice... other peoples drinks came to our table even though they weren't ours, all the younger staff looked unenthused and like they couldn't be bothered to be there. It took us about 3 efforts to pay and even then other tables got to pay before us even though we had been up asking. No communication between any of them.

There was no mention on allergies at all which I believe is now a legal requirement to do so. It was chaos in the kitchen, no one knew what they were doing and there was no leadership at all. Those young staff need proper training because there poor service spoilt it for us. They didnt even know what we had when trying to pay! The only reason I gave 2 stars was for the lady at the start on her own. She was let down by everyone else! We won't...

Came here on a Wednesday afternoon for a quick sunny lunch with my mum. We used to love coming here when it was Loubees. The place has been done up beautifully I must say. Plenty of outside seating. We had to seat ourselves which left us waiting a long time to even be noticed, we waited at least 20 minutes for drinks orders to be taken. The menu is limited but fine for a tearooms lunch menu. Our food took over an hour to arrive after asking for it twice, we ordered very basic stuff, me a halloumi salad and my mum a bacon and chicken sandwich. It finally came, my mums was full of Mayo and bacon undercooked, mine was mediocre with gone off lettuce hidden at the bottom of the plate. We ordered a coffee, very watery and bland coffee. Another member of staff came up to us, turned to myself (a 24 year old woman) touched my shoulder and said in a very patronising manner, if I would like a complementary ice lolly. Not only was food mediocre and service lacking, all staff had no masks on and were wearing flip flops. This place is located within a garden centre, everyone is required to wear masks around the place but staff aren’t wearing any??? And flip flops in a location with foods?? And touching my shoulder during covid?? Unacceptable. We used to come here on a weekly basis but absolutely won’t be returning. Very...

We went there on Sunday with an intention of having lunch with our two small children (4 yo and 2 yo). Bad idea. The tea room looks beautiful. All those flowers around and outside area is mesmerising. And that's probably the only positive. Unfortunately we experienced terrible customer service. One member of staff came fairly quickly to us to collect the order but we were waiting for our food for 40 minutes. The lady who took our order didn't inform us about such a long waiting time. We ordered chicken sandwich, wrap, jacket potato and panini. I did not expect that at all. Imagine to wait this long with two small and hungry children. They started whining and wanted to go home. When I asked the other lady (I'm assuming she is the manager?) about our order she said she will check it for us. After another minutes of waiting I asked another member of staff and finally our food arrived. No apologies were given whatsoever. The manager handed our food in silence. This was so uncomfortable and also, we got only one set of cutlery. I felt not welcomed because I asked where my food us. It did put us all off eating completely. At that point kids were tired and didn't want to eat anything at all :( I gave one star extra because my sun dried tomato panini was really tasty. We...