Pepe's — Restaurant in Great Britain

Although the food at this Pepes is consistently delicious, the service is shockingly poor and repeatedly ruins the experience. I’ve been here several times, and it’s always the same – the staff show little interest in the customers, and the atmosphere feels more like a break room for the employees than a place to eat.

On one visit, I waited over 35 minutes for a simple takeaway order. When I tried to ask the staff for an update, they quite literally avoided eye contact with me and hid behind the counter, using their personal phones. It felt like they were going out of their way to ignore me, and it was clear they had no intention of communicating or providing any reassurance about the delay.

To make matters worse, while customers were waiting and tables were left dirty, one staff member chose to sit down right in front of us, eating and scrolling through TikTok – as if she was enjoying my meal in front of me. There were at least three uncleared tables around us, and instead of quickly cleaning them (which would’ve taken five minutes at most), she prioritised her own break. It wouldn’t have hurt to delay her break slightly, but her actions directly affected other customers and just came across as disrespectful.

The whole experience made it feel like the restaurant is run for the staff’s comfort, not the customers’. There’s a serious lack of professionalism, communication, and care – and it's been this way every time I’ve visited. It’s genuinely frustrating, because the food is great, but the service is so poor that it completely overshadows everything else. I really hope management take this feedback seriously, because this place could be fantastic if it were...

We had the family platter which consists of a whole chicken, 4 wings, 2 large fries, a spicy rice and 4 dips.

Food was good. When comparing to the likes of Nandos & Roosters we found the chicken had less skin on it. Still tasty and good quality. The chicken was less veiny too. The chips were superb and tasted good even when they went cold. I think the chips consumed quite a bit of oil hence they were still good for quite some time. The only thing that let it down was the dips. None of them were good other than the chimichurri mayo. Luckily we had a takeout, took it home and had some sauces of our choice. Didn’t try the spicy rice. Didn’t want it to be honest.

All in all food was good. Service was ok. Turnover time was 20 minutes. They were a little busy so expect longer wait times at peak times. They have a toilet for customers which was reasonably clean. The shop seamed pretty tidy. Would recommend and will be back. Just need to take a bottle of ketchup...

I order on the pepes app ahead of time so I don’t have to wait in the store for longer than necessary, but every time now I am waiting 30-40 minutes extra in store for my order. Paying the extra pound for the convenience of ordering ahead on the app feels redundant for how much longer I have to wait. The staff seem overwhelmed and unable to keep up with the volume of orders, they aren’t communicating with each other and this is holding orders back, and even causing them to go to the wrong people. Today the store was full of smoke which set off the fire alarm. I checked twice with the staff for an update on my order and they had no clue each time, until the third time when someone checked the hot box to find my order in there the whole time with my name incorrectly written on it. Food is great but the staff aren’t able to keep on top of it all...