Oberon's Cocktail Bar & Venue — Restaurant in Ashland

I’ve been one of the top regulars of this establishment for over ten years New owners just bought the place and fired all senior staff. All resident bands have jumped ship. They’re down to one remaining trained bartender and the new owner’s girlfriend who has never worked a day at the bar before the sale. Greed has destroyed an ashland institution overnight. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars at this establishment personally, and brought in literally hundreds of new patrons. I will never return. The new owners don’t care a lick about the community, ashland, the local music scene, or the hardworking service industry workers that make Ashland work.

EDIT: WOW. Every word of the new owner’s response is a lie. To add insult to injury the new managers ambushed an open mic held in protest in Lithia Park last night and lied, gaslit, and generally called anyone who disagreed with their horrendous treatment of their staff racists. I went into the bar last night and the staff were literally sobbing. They’re lying about the number of staff the old owners employed too. And what is a “top regular”? One that has spent tens of thousands of dollars at the establishment. One that has brought thousands of customers in. One who is close friends with every staff member as of last week. One that literally did all of Oberon’s original SEO and online reputation management (and who still has access to much of it) and is the reason this business has so many positive reviews, has a powerful ranking in organic search, and has strong listings on third party sites such as Yelp (yeah, I literally made all of your online listings). One that built portions of that bar with his bare hands. One that still works at the other two Oberon’s bars. That’s what that means, new owners.

This community is too small for you to lie like this and get away with it. You need to put down the shovel. You’ve dug...

Continuously horrible service. Every. Single. Time.

The tables are self serve, but even still the two "bartenders" are extremely rude EVERY time you go in. No matter what night of the week or time of day, they act like you're doing them a disservice by entering the establishment. When asked what time they close they told us 11-12 & online says they close at 11. Yet they still let us know they were about to do last call at 9:45, then said they were "done" at 10. They allowed us to order food before 9:45, knowing their chef had apparently gone home, so our food wasn't delivered until nearly 10:30 - after asking what happened to it. (Not to mention we ordered the chocolate cake which turned out to be microwaveable Safeway lava cake) Last but not least - they shut half of the lights in the building off, closest to where my party was sitting. Pushing us out and being very unkind at 10pm. The female bartender with the turtle thigh tattoo was extremely rude and annoyed with us for simply walking in the door. She returned to the bathroom several times which was directly across from our table and after leaving the bathroom she reminded us again that they were "done." As someone who has worked many years of customer service it is NOT hard to maintain professional customer service and essentially "fake it" which she didn't even attempt to do. If they truly do last call at 10?? Then she easily and nicely could have let us know - speaking to customers like they are human beings is truly just not that hard....I'll never be returning here and instead going to the 5 other options on the same block. Good...

I honestly feel so bad for the new owners. Handed a really bad situation and is trying their best to turn it around. I think you may want to reconsider who you’ve staffed to replace the originals. Couldn’t have had a more informal unprofessional experience with the new “head” bartender. Im not the owners, but you probably want to think twice about making a guy who tells potential future co-workers that he’s recently sober from alcohol and working in a bar isn’t the best for his addiction during an interview with someone… not to mention have the the prospect sit in the corner for over an hour and a half while he talks to his coworkers and occasionally says something to you from afar or while walking away. Of course this is after they drove 45 minutes one way to offer assistance. Owner is incredibly nice, down to earth and has a great heart for saving this place and the bar itself is very clean and unique to the eye; but substituting one wrong with another will not be bringing this place out of its shell anytime soon

Edit: After reading the lack of accountability on the reply, I’m switching my two stars to one. A personal review about a particular person? Ever heard of one bad apple spoils the bunch? You can’t preach change to the public and hire people like this to represent YOU and YOUR business. YOU tell the public about the past experiences the bar has encountered with drugs and then YOU hire a very recent recovering alcoholic who tells people during interviews about it… I don’t see...