Mellow Mushroom Athens — Restaurant in Athens-Clarke County Unified Government

This review is solely directed at the manager and only the manager. This is not related to the food itself, which has always been very good. We love Mellow pizza- it’s some of the best around! However, we have had a few bad instances with the general manager at the Athens location. A few months ago we had a very slow experience getting our pizza and then found out our order had been misplaced completely. The waitress was extremely nice and apologetic, but only offered a slight discount at first because that was what the manager said to do. After waiting a while longer to get our food, we asked to speak to the manager about the situation and see if we could get a full refund after the food finally came out. He refused to come out and speak to us in general and simply told the waitress to honor the request and leave it at that. A few days ago we came in on Christmas Eve to eat, and experienced a similar situation. We have been eating Mellow on Christmas Eve for 20+ years, but I called to make sure they would be open this year due to the circumstances with covid. I was told that yes, they would be open until 8 pm. We showed up at 6 pm, and were promptly told by a server that they had stopped seating guests at 5:45 pm (15 mins earlier) and were done for the night other than to-go orders based on what the manager had told them all. There was hardly anyone in the restaurant in general, so frankly there wasn’t any reason for this. Especially because they were still doing to-go orders until 8 pm, so all the same people had to be there to work still. We were very disappointed because this was a tradition for us and we had even called to check and make sure this wouldn’t happen. Our request to speak to the manager and see if we could just sit down and eat real quickly or work something out was denied without the manager even acknowledging us in general and refusing to speak to us yet again. We had our first issue with him that set this off altogether last year, but I won’t get into it since this post has been so long already. Bottom line is- I’m not sure if he has something against speaking to people altogether or just doesn’t know how to deal with customer service or helping guests in general, but he is a problem and the restaurant would be much better off if someone else was managing the place....

I am really disappointed with my experience and how the management addressed it.

I went to mellow mushroom for trivia night and I left my prescription Ray-Ban sunglasses (worth $250+) on the table when I left. When I called the restaurant to look for them, I was first told that the Ray-Bans had been turned in and that they were left at the hostess stand.

When I went to get my sunglasses the following afternoon, the hostess that was working at that time could not locate the sunglasses. He told me that he had seen them at the hostess stand when he closed the night before but today they were gone. He messaged the opening hostess who said they did not see the sunglasses when they opened the restaurant.

Normally when I leave something behind at a restaurant or venue, if it is never found, I do not question it. However in this case it seemed very strange to me that the sunglasses had been turned in, had been left in an employee area, and had it confirmed by several staff members that the sunglasses were there when they closed the restaurant, but then the opening staff claimed to not have seen them.

I talked to the manager and I told her that I would normally not accuse someone of this, but this specific situation seemed to me like one of the employees had stolen my sunglasses. The manager simply told me that she agreed and that it seemed like one of the employees probably took them. She did not offer to do anything about it and when I asked if she would question her employees she said she’d try to ask around but she kind of shrugged it off and didn’t seem to think it was very serious.

If my sunglasses had just gone missing that would be one thing, but getting acknowledgment that a staff member at this establishment likely stole them and have management do absolutely nothing about it was very...

My party of 6-7 came in for a later lunch/early dinner today and experienced the absolute worst service. I understand that sometimes things get stressful in the restaurant business, but it does not excuse not checking on our table for 45 minutes, not updating us that our food would be taking longer than expected (ended up taking us about an hour to get our single appetizer when the table next to us was waited upon hand and foot by our server), all of our water glasses were left empty and we had to flag down another server to even find ours to ask for refills, not getting our food to us until 1 hr and 45 minutes after we initially placed the order, and so much more. When we asked to speak to the manager to ask them about why our food was taking so long (which we wouldn’t have even done if our server had just stopped by and said “hey, the kitchen is a little backed up and I’m sorry about the wait!”), our server came instead and interrogated us about why we were asking for the manager and wouldn’t get the manager until we gave him the reason we wanted to talk to whoever was managing the restaurant at the time. Usually we have an okay experience at this restaurant, but this past trip was extremely frustrating and unprofessional. In the 2+ hours we were stuck there, our server only came to us 3 or 4 times. Even just stopping by and giving a quick update or asking us if everything was okay would...