Bear & Staff — Restaurant in Liverpool

Been here with family many, many times as we live local. The majority of the time it's been a really nice experience. Unfortunately our last visit was just poor. I understand as business you can't get it right every time but every complaint I have could have been easily prevented. First we arrive and we were unable to park near the front entrance due to flooding. My mother is disabled & so had to use the stairs. As we had pre booked we we're shown straight to our table and our order was taken fairly quickly. The food took a little too long to arrive. A 2 course meal for 4 people took just under 3 hours to complete. We had hoped for 3 courses but decided we'd waited long enough and asked for the bill. Eventually the bill arrived and we had been overcharged £60. It took too long to rectify this problem although it was eventually rectified. We left quite underwhelmed & unimpressed. Unfortunately this was not the end of our problem visit. 5 days later I received a £100 parking fine through the post for unauthorised parking at the Bear & staff. I immediately contacted the Bear & Staff but had to leave a message on an answerphone which no one replied to. I then contacted Green King guest relations to complain. They asked me to provide documental evidence & proof of purchase. I sent the requested information. What came next was the icing on the cake. Joanne - General manager at the Bear & staff actually called my mobile to tell me the list of things I now needed to do in order to get my fine recinded. I told Joanne I won't be inconvenienced any more than I had been already and that to expect me to chase this myself was a disgrace. All she wanted to do was pass the buck. Apparently my family & I had missed every sinage referring to this parking fine throughout the entire 3 hour visit. The fact is not one of us saw one single sign. Do you actually think we would see the sign and then just ignore it? Not one member of staff mentioned that we had to sign into an ipad in order to avoid a fine. So if like us you miss the signs you will be fined. Unbelievably poor customer service from a so called General manager. Who actually said to me and I quote "if you dont sort this yourself, its your fine & you'll be the one going to court". Absolute disgrace!! Pure Laziness!! I called Green King straight away who apologised to me immediately and told me that they'd expect the venue to sort this obvious mistake. Huge let down from a really nice family favourite venue. You are just shooting yourselves in the foot treating paying customers like this. Needless to say we will never be back to this venue again. Thanks for nothing Joanne.

There you go again not taking on any responsibility for the obvious failings in our visit. The reason i was shouting at you today was becuase you were asking me to do what you are paid to do. Don't worry, I called green king & they have sorted it for me no problems at all, as it should be. As you should've done.

like i said...

Overall -bad food -expensive -clean ish -parking available -good choice for kids -good deals available -understaffed

We got 2 bottles of water between 9 people the whole time we were there. The food came out slow due to there only seeming to be one waitress on staff who bless her was doing her best to keep the place afloat but it meant that we were all waiting a lot. Kids meals looked nicer than the adults to be honest. I had the gammon and so did 2 others in our group. The gammon was very hard. Like it was hard to cut chew and swallow. It didnt taste of much and for £15 thats disappointing. Fried egg was fine, maybe a bit underdone but whatever and the grilled pinaple slice was nice enough however i dont know why it had been grilled but eh thats just me. Chips were ok, same as wetherspoons ones which i like. And the peas were a bit off in colour but my nephew ate them. He had battered fish like a posh fish fingers which was mainly batter. Then chips and broccoli. The broccoli was so frozen he couldn't actually bite through it. He's a tank aswell like it was just frozen. Other members of the grouOverall -bad food -expensive -clean ish -parking available -good choice for kids -good deals available -understaffedp who had it too said it was frozen. The deserts for kids brownie was basically the exact same as the adults one but adults one is twice the price. They didnt have cream for the salted caramel sundae so I had the brownie. It was very sickly like it was just so sweet I guess that it actually just wasn't very nice...

The places interior was quite nice and there was parking available and the disabled toilet was actually open which made taking kids the toilet a lot easier. Staff were generally pleasent and so were other customers its just a shame that the food was a bit rank. Gave me diarrhoea the next day. Like actual full on run to the toilet level diarrhoea. Family also had a right faff trying to pay with no Internet or service and trying to...

We booked a table for the Burns night menu. Table was booked for 730, we arrived at 725 to be told our table wasn’t quite ready and it’d be 5 minutes. We didn’t mind waiting so went the bar and bought a couple of drinks. 30 minutes later at 8pm we were shown to our table, without any apology. We were given menus and made our selection. The waiter arrived to take our order at about 810. We ordered drinks and food. We were told that the only dessert they had left was the Eton mess, again no apology just a matter of fact so you’ll have to have that. At about 830 I attempted to call the person who had seated us as we still hadn’t received our drinks order, which was only a bottle of wine, a bottle of water and a beer. She acknowledged me and shouted “2 minutes”. At about 845 we gave up and left. As we were leaving we didn’t see anyone to tell that we’d given up waiting. The bar area was empty so I’m not sure why we’d waited about half an hour for our drinks. If we’d at least been served some drinks we may have not noticed the delay with the food. 1 hour and 15 minutes from the time of our booking and we hadn’t even been served a drink just isn’t acceptable. Before we left we called another restaurant in Woolton Village and we walked there and managed to rescue our evening, albeit not the traditional Burns night meal we’d planned. When we arrived at the other restaurant the Bear and Staff called me, but I missed the call, that was at 21:02, which is when I assume they noticed we’d gone. The service was just awful, surly, rude and dismissive. There was a table of about 6 people near us. They were eating when we arrived, not sure if it was starters or mains. When they finished a waiter came and removed to plates from their table and then never returned to clear the rest of their table. They were complaining amongst themselves. Do yourself a favour and avoid this place...