Pepe's — Restaurant in England

I have hundreds of orders at this Normanton road Pepes so I know this food and this restaurant VERY well. It used to be my favourite place to eat in the whole city of Derby. Unfortunately, I have to pay extra to order on the UberEats or JustEat app - as everyone in Derby knows Normanton Road is a total nightmare for parking, and when you go to get the food yourself you are waiting in there for a very long time. There are a lot of questions I have for this place.

The first I’d like to address is delivery charges and overall costs. On both Uber and JustEat it charges customers £4.74 for delivery which is made of £3.75 delivery fee and £0.99 service charges. When you live in Derby city centre like I do just a couple of minutes drive away, this cost is WAY too high for delivery. The total cost for 1 person to eat an £8 chicken and rice box delivered is going to £13+ for someone living 6 minutes drive away from the restaurant. That makes no sense.

Secondly, your competitors like Maemae’s Peri Peri are offering a chicken and rice box at buy one get one free for £7.99. The food there is not as good quality but I can get double the quantity at less cost, why would I ever go to Pepes again? Next up is the food quality. Sometimes the chicken is perfectly cooked with a great amount of sauce on the chicken. But then more often recently the chicken has been completely overcooked and been sent to me black and burnt all the way through covered in black soot and charcoal. All you can taste is burnt ash on the chicken and the food tastes like cigarettes. Sometimes they will just send you dry chicken pieces as well with barely any of the flavour sauce you chose at order. I’m not sure what is going on there for quality control but somebody needs to be checking the food is okay before it is packaged and sent out. It never used to be like this, but it’s been happening for about 6 months now.

Next it brings me to the overall delivery times. I have ordered food here in non peak times, and busy peak times. No matter what time of day you order, even if you only have 1 item in your basket, the delivery always takes around 1 hour. This is just too long. I have been in the store myself to place an order for 1 plate of food (not even a meal). I was waiting 45 minutes for no real reason, the entire restaurant was empty. It’s not just a 1 time occurrence either, when I order on the app it notifies me that the driver is at the restaurant. I can see my driver standing there for 30 minutes+ just waiting. A lot of delivery drivers I know are starting to refuse to go to this restaurant because of how long they leave them standing there, when they could have been making much more money with multiple other deliveries in that time.

Finally, the last issue at this restaurant is the customer service. When you call the phone line provided on their website and also the same phone number they listed for themselves on Google, it ALWAYS and I mean always, go immediately to voicemail. It is impossible to speak to someone here about your order. If there is an issue with your order like missing items, the UberEats app says you need to contact the restaurant, but it’s literally impossible to do here. I then have to go through the app and request a refund, and the app gives you a full refund for your order anyway, costing the restaurant money when they could have just picked up the phone. If they are missing items from the store, they don’t update the apps, for example if something is sold out, they do not update it. They let you order and pay for it and then send something else, leading customers to get refund on the app also and a poor customer experience overall. You would never ever take a customer’s money directly in a store environment for a product that you don’t have in stock, so it’s not acceptable to do it to people that order in a different way.

Please make some big improvements to the above Pepes Derby! Please see the comments as a way you can improve. I really WANT to order more as the food is amazing...

Absolutely the Worst Experience Ever

I placed an order online through the website, which stated that I would receive a notification once the order was accepted. No notification ever came. Regardless, I went to the store at the specified collection time.

Upon arrival, I was met with incredibly rude and arrogant behavior. I showed my order number to a staff member who glanced at it and then simply went back to cooking chips—no acknowledgement, no update, not even a basic courtesy like, "Your order isn't ready yet." Meanwhile, several delivery drivers were crowding around the counter, and I was left standing awkwardly with no assistance.

The screens doesn't work so you have no idea what order is being prepared and which one is ready. You are left at the mercy of the rude employees.

After waiting 10 minutes, I asked again and was completely ignored. Another 10 minutes later, my food was finally given to me—cold. It had clearly been sitting on the counter the whole time. The staff member didn’t bother calling out that the food was ready, nor did he hand it over when I asked. His attitude throughout was dismissive and unprofessional.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time I’ve had a bad experience at this branch. It seems to be a recurring issue. Judging by the other reviews, I’m not alone—but clearly, management is not interested in improving things.

I’ve been a loyal fan of Pepe’s Piri and have enjoyed visiting many branches across different cities. Unfortunately, the Normanton Road branch is a complete disgrace to the brand. This kind of service reflects poorly on the whole company.

I won’t be returning—and I strongly advise others to avoid this location if they value good customer service...

I am a regular customer at Pepes, food is fantastic.

However, service has been poor on two occasions.

My rating is based on the service from a young man named denesh.

My first occasion I was served by his several weeks ago he was unable to concentrate on my order which was available for packing in the waiting area. 10 minutes in fact.

Today I waited 25 minutes for an order, 10 minutes of which was me watching him do not much but flap around in a panicked state.

Two other customers before me had already been waiting an excessivet time one of which could see his food was ready to bag.

I eventually got my order which I checked.

Unfortunately I did not check hard enough as when I got home I had chicken wings instead of chicken strips.

This is what has prompted me to write this post .

Pepes need to replace denesh with someone else as he clearly is not competent to do basic tasks.

If you are reading this I wouldt recommend ordering online, as you then have an audit trail of what was ordered and a realisminutestic expectation of when the food will arrive.

From now on I won't be going in person because I don't want service like that.

It ruined my meal this evening.

The guy also asked me what dips I would like, I asked for two of each. He said you are only allowed 3? He then have me 4.

Shocked really. I totally understand that we have to pay for extra dips but seriously there is a way to explaint that not just outright refuse...