Frankie & Benny's — Restaurant in England

Have been to the Trowbridge F&B several times at different times of day/evening, including on a busy Saturday night in a group of seven for a birthday, and service has always been really good at all times. Three of us went yesterday early lunchtime. We knew we had over 90 minutes before needing to get to an appointment, and especially because there were only three tables in there and two waitresses, we were confident that, as usual, we’d have plenty of time. How wrong we were! Started off normally, ordered our lunchtime menus and the starters came quite quickly. Naturally, they didn’t take long to eat, and we stacked the plates on the end of the table. Still only 3 tables of 2 or 4 people each were in the place(including us). Nobody came to clear the plates, and we waited patiently, but after about 15 minutes, still nobody came to clear them. Eventually, when I saw one of the waitresses standing chatting to a delivery guy (Uber eats or similar), directly opposite our table but with her back to us, I stood up and politely got her attention – she instantly said ‘You want to pay”? Obviously, she still hadn’t bothered to check or keep track of her tables. When I said no, we want to eat, she cleared our stater plates and left. Another 20 minutes later, after seeing several ‘Uber’ orders be despatched and another table receiving their order, and still no food for us, I politely stopped one of the waitresses and asked where our meals were, as we were now coming under time pressure, and still mains and dessert to eat. She said that we should have told her if we were in a hurry. I replied that we weren’t in hurry when we ordered, but we had been in there almost an hour and had only had our starters. No apology in any form, or promise to check with the kitchen, she just went back there and started chatting to another (or the same) delivery driver! Looking at the cook’s reaction, it seemed like they’d forgotten our order. When the food finally came (still no apology for the delay), the two pasta dishes my family had ordered were fine, but my chicken burger and chips were way overcooked. The chicken was dry and almost inedible, and the chips were almost burnt to a crisp. I would have raised this at the time, but we were now under so much time pressure that the last thing I wanted to do was be late for our appointment. We just had time to eat our meals as quickly as possible and leave. We didn’t even have time to eat the two desserts we’d pre-ordered, so we took one away and cancelled the other one (lost sales as well as an unhappy customer). It was only when we paid, that the waitress mumbled an apology a couple of times, but still didn’t mention the delay . just a “sorry about that” with zero sincerity. To be fair, it’s the only time to date that we’ve had any issue at F&B’s, even when visiting at the busiest times, and I know any place can have a blip every now and then. However, given that the place was almost empty, there’s no excuse for waiting staff not to pay attention to the customers. Even worse, trying to shift the blame to your customers when it’s clearly the staff who have dropped the ball, is just downright disrespectful, especially to me, who had remained calm and polite throughout (many wouldn’t). In the past, we’ve extolled how well-trained the staff in F&B are, but yesterday, they seemed more interested in chatting with the delivery guys. It seemed like they just couldn’t wait for their shift to be over and for customers to go. We will go again sometime, and hopefully yesterday was just a blip. Nevertheless, there’s no excuse for the customer-blaming. If we hadn’t been before and had such good service, we wouldn’t be considering returning. In context of similar standard/price places in Trowbridge, F&B’s service quality is normally what differentiates them from their competitors, so let’s hope this isn’t the new norm for...

I’ve come here a few times but every time I come it gets worse. This time we came for dinner and the place was as busy as I’ve seen however there were still many tables available.

First off it took about 10 minutes just to be seated. I could only see 2 waitresses and they were busy so I didn’t mind at first but then to took at least 15 minutes just to order drinks, and then when they finally arrived the coke was “out” (they had to change the syrup) we did eventually get our drinks changed.

Now comes the food, or lack of it! At least 30 minutes for a starter of garlic bread (still only 2 waitresses and what I believe to be the manager was doing the take out orders) then we noticed over tables that had came after us be served food before us, so I asked and they said it’ll be coming “soon” at this point I was ready to leave.

We seen the manager ask the kitchen where our food is and they didn’t even know! I could tell he was very disappointed and the lady that seems to be in charge of the kitchen really has an attitude problem, I won’t go into detail of what I could hear her saying to the manager but it was extremely unacceptable and rude. After 1 hour and 30 minutes our food finally arrived, unfortunately it wasn’t anything special. It completely ruined our evening out and we shall not...

awful experience. Absolutely appalled with staff, timings, presentation(well lack of) and the way our complaints were dealt with. On arrival we were jumped on straight away and asking for our order, we hadn't even had a chance to sit and decide. We then had to ask them back to order our food. We then waited a reasonable time for our starters, in which I can't complain. They were adequate. We then waited an extra hour for our mains, after asking where our food was we just kept being told "a couple of minutes" "a couple of minutes" each time we asked. We were offered no compensation for the wait, we didn't even receive a slight apology. When our food eventually arrived. It had missing items of which we had asked for, the chicken was completely vainy hardly had any white meat, after searching the chicken we found the centre was raw. The pulled pork calzone didn't appear to have any pulled pork inside. After complaining throughout our whole evening they couldn't even sacrifice a simple sorry... however after the general manager came over, who was very professional and lovely. Has sorted the issues and has held her word. Very impressed with how eventually she dealt with our complaints after one of the staff in front of her got into my...