The Standing Order - JD Wetherspoon — Restaurant in Stevenage

Extremely Disappointed

I’ve visited this pub numerous times over the years and have often seen customers celebrating birthdays and other special occasions without any issues. Based on those experiences, I decided to celebrate my own birthday here with friends — a decision I now deeply regret.

We spent around £200, expecting a pleasant evening. Instead, we were met with poor service, a lack of staff, and no regard for customer experience. It took nearly 1 hour and 30 minutes for our food to arrive, with no apology or explanation. The staff seemed overwhelmed and disengaged.

After the long wait, we finally began celebrating with a small cake. We were told by a waitress that eating cake inside wasn’t allowed, so we immediately respected the request and moved outside. We were quiet, respectful, and ensured we didn’t disturb anyone.

Unfortunately, one of my friends, unaware of the request, had a bite of cake inside. For this minor misunderstanding, the staff accused our entire group, canceled our remaining order, and asked us to leave the premises. There was no attempt to listen, no warning, and certainly no courtesy shown, despite the amount we spent and our clear efforts to cooperate.

What should have been a joyful celebration turned into a humiliating and upsetting experience. I left feeling disrespected, disappointed, and shocked at how the situation was handled.

If this is how loyal customers are treated — especially on meaningful occasions — I strongly urge the management to reflect on their approach to hospitality. This experience has left a lasting negative impression, and I will be reconsidering any...

Food was OK (my rice and chilli were very dry but tasty). Service seemed very slow compared to my local Wetherspoons with our food arriving before our drinks We received our drinks when we told the person bringing our food that we hadn't received them. More concerning was the lack of social distancing, which included a lack of social distancing between staff and customers (staff standing within 30cm of customers). We observed a member of staff placing ketchup sachets in cocktail jars. He accidentally dropped a tomato ketchup sachet on the floor, picked it up and without wiping it, placed it straight into the jar of sachets that would be given to / taken by customers. The floor was extremely grubby and littered with food debris and a napkin. As others have pointed out, the place generally looks run down and we couldn't tell if our table had been wiped or not. We took a while to settle on a table because several unoccupied tables obviously hadn't been wiped The pub felt very crowded but people were stood in and blocking gangways and nobody was being verbally reminded to facilitate social distancing. We did not feel safe and will not...

I do really like weatherspoons and we visit them all over the country, from London to Liverpool. They are really good value, I love the craft beers and the food is often really good. We walked to the one in Stevenage high street on Sunday morning to have a breakfast. It was very busy in there but there only seemed to be three staff running the place, the manageress, a waitress and a chef in the kitchen. We ordered an eggs Benedict each and waited for it to arrive. It turned up about 20 minutes later which we didn't mind because they were really stretched in there. But it wasn't the best, the poached eggs were like hard boiled eggs with hollondaise sauce from a jar and ham on a dry roll, and it was cold. It wouldn't have done any good complaining because the staff were trying their best so we just put it down to experience. But I must stress that this is a one off, and I usually have a great experience in...