Tabard — Restaurant in Rotherham

Massive failure to provide funeral Buffet, very regrettable & sad.

Funeral Buffet Booked for a date in May. Paid for in cash on premises.

Upon arrival at premises, no one was aware of the booking - no provisions for funeral were ready.

Was told it was not provided because of a fryer had broken on site.

No one from premises contacted any member of the Funeral party.

No alternate food was provided, which didn't need frying.

Basically, nothing was ready for the arrival of the funeral guests. No food, hot drinks, anything. Just forgotten about.

I've tried to contact Marstons Customer Services and also been in contact with Area Manager, but despite being nearly 3 month now, no resolution has been made.

What I have been told by Marstons and i will add that I have had to peddle hard to get any info from Marstons employees:

No one on site aware of the booking.

No one can trace the previous booking and payment cash transactions on the point of sale register audit system, to identify why the booking and payment was not fulfilled.

Over 2 months since the issue was first raised by myself via phone call and Email with Senita at Marstons Customer services was raised - CCTV from premises has been overwritten. So cannot identify persons involved in booking process. This is due to Marstons pedestrian approach to the problem.

OK, so now back to the time of the failed event at the Tabard - 30 members of the funeral party stood in the pub, incredulous that nothing was ready for them. Great. Imagine yourself in that position.

The daughter of the deceased, her brothers and sister and other family and friends just stood there stunned.

The injury had already happened, a family member had passed away - forgetting the funeral buffet was the insult.

Meals for attendees were served from restaurant menu in lieu of Buffet failure. However, the last meal was served 2 hours after it was ordered, most meals served were left uneaten. Quality of what was served is a whole other issue.

Senior Area Manager Claire, Marstons Customer Service team, all seem to not care about the complaint and despite several attempts to get resolution by myself have so far failed to respond in any timely manner.

I try to stay away from reviews, but, don't really have any other forms of getting closure to this incident - it's a biggy, so it won't get left - so I'm starting here now.

Please be aware that if you are booking a Funeral Buffet here, mainly due to its proximity to the Crematorium - the premises failed to provide what they had offered and what we had paid for.

Be prepared to stand there, with stunned funeral attendees, wondering what happened.

Don't expect any elderly members of the family to get a cup of tea, or coffee either.

Total...

I had booked a table for 14 people for after a funeral, the funeral was at 2.45 so booked table for 4pm, when we arrived there was no table set out for us the lady behind the bar knew nothing about my booking and just said there had been a technical fault in the kitchen so no food available, no manager to speak to so was utterly disgusted at a time when I was also very upset. I had to start ringing round other pubs to find somewhere else as I had 14 people wanting food. When I checked my phone I did have a missed call and voicemail at 14.06 and then an email at 14.09 but as I was attending my relatives funeral my phone was switched off so never got the call or email till after we had turned up. I also never got a follow up call the day after to apologise for what had happened, I get that the kitchen issue was probably out of anyone's control, but the fact that I wasn't spoken to and it wasn't followed up is disgusting, I won't be visiting ever again and would never recommend...

Absolutely the worst customer service I have ever received, I have never been to the place before and will never again!! We stood in the door for a while waiting for a staff member to advise if we could sit or had to wait… no staff in site just a barmaid who looked as us and just carried on serving. When we finally got to a table the waitress came over and literally threw the beer mats on the table. When ordering the food the barmaid could not answer the questions about the meal and didn’t attempt to get the answers we ordered 1 main meal 1 carvery and 1 child’s meal the food took 40 minutes to arrive at the table and wasn’t the best. The carvery was nice however once again had to wait as the mash had run out.

We spent around a hour at our table where the table next to us needed clearing!

The overall experience was poor the staff definitely need customer service training and I recommend...