Avanti Food and Beverage Boulder — Restaurant in Boulder

Edit: The manager responded to this review with her email. I emailed her and she promptly responded. She gave me a partial refund equaling the difference between what I paid and what the college night deal would have been. She also said the waitress had been spoken with about this.

My issues below have been fully addressed which shows that management cares. Avanti is definitely worth a visit. It probably has the best view of any bar in Boulder.

Original review: Generally this is a great place with nice food and a nice atmosphere. Last night was a more negative experience.

I and my friends went to Avanti to hangout on a Friday. When we got there, we went up to the fourth floor rooftop. We saw something about the Friday college night deals. We're all PhD students, so we decided to get the $5 mules that they had. We told a server that was walking around, and she said that she just needed to see our Buff One Cards in addition to our government IDs so of course when she asked for those we showed her. Not an issue. I showed her my student ID then said I'd do a $5 mule. She seemed very kind and said they'd be right up.

Later in the night when I asked to pay my tab, I was expecting $30 plus tax since I and my fiancee had 6 of the $5 Mules between the two of us. It came to $72 plus tax.

When I asked her about that, she said that the happy hour started at 9p. We got there at 7p.

My issue here is that she acted like the happy hour had already started when we got there. She was taking orders from that menu and asking for our student IDs 2 hours before the happy hour even started.

Why would you ask to see the school IDs and take orders from that menu when the happy hour doesn't start for another two hours?

When I asked her about this, she gave an insincere apology and claimed she told us that the happy hour hadn't started. She also claimed that we already had our student IDs out. She also became quite rude about things, saying "I'm sorry you misheard me" in a very condescending tone.

Nobody out of our 6 person group heard her say that because she didn't. Nobody already had their student ID out. When we mentioned that happy hour, she asked us to get our student IDs out, and she didn't try to correct us when we were looking at that menu and ordering the $5 mules.

Yes, the timeframe is listed on the menu. So what she should have done is been clear that the happy hour hadn't started yet and not requested our student IDs.

But no, she started taking orders from that menu after she verified our student status, and she absolutely no plan to correct the mistake later when we pointed it out.

She didn't say anything, asked us to get our IDs out 2 hours early, and knew we were ordering stuff off the college night menu. She was entirely misleading and rude about things, and she didn't seem to care that she messed up. I definitely would have ordered different had she actually been clear about things. This experience makes me want to avoid Avanti in favor of other places in the future.

Tl;dr waitress advertised a college night happy hour by taking drink orders from that menu and asking for student IDs 2 hours before the happy hour started. She was misleading, rude, and didn't seem to care that she...

Absolutely terrible service as of thenight of Saturday September 2nd. I went into the restaurant with my group of friends after a long hike to long lake. We went in and the first thing I did was go to the bar and ask for a drink. I inquired about the prices for certain high-value liquors, this is where everything went south. The women working the bar at 930pm was extremely rude as well as the manager, Alec. I asked the price of the drinks I inquired about then ordered a Moscow mule. I paid 12$. My drink WAS NOT MADE. I kindly reminded the bartender that I had paid her about 7 minutes ago and that I'd like my drink please. She said "oh sorry, usually customers who tip get their drink fast" let me say as a professional, this one act is enough cause for firing. I then told her to get the manager as her tone was very much wrong. I just wanted my drink... anyways, Alec the manager came over to talk th situation over. I explained with great detail with my 2 friends as backup that she did indeed insult me and refuse my refund, and my service. Alec, unfortunately, did not listen to me or m friends and did not go back over the camera footage. He literally got angry at me, physically he was getting hot, and had some anger issues even being an employee there. I have been to this restaurant with business associates about 5 times. I tip based off of the service I am given. Anyways he made me leave as he insulted me, saying I was drunk when I had 0 drinks that whole day. I work with criminal defense attorneys and I will be bringing this matter of attention to the owner of this establishment. Please contact me to work out a potential deal before court. We will bring you to court and follow the proper proceedings to be sure that Alec and specifically the bartender women be removed from employment at Avanti. I am honestly so disgusted at their actions of last night that no apology can be given. Only the action of firing employees who do not make the mark, or in this case miss it completely, can help turn this establishment around Oh yeah, the women tried to say over and over that I was threatening her. Well, as a legal tip, you were actually threatening me when you yelled at me. I am a defense attorney, again, we will bring this case to court soon but I am allowing the owner to contact me, and fire these two employees before such actions are taken. I hope this message has found you well, owner. Please make any mistakes...

We’ve been to this location 2 times and the first time was great, and we were happy enough to come back today a little after 12pm. We understood the dynamic of the restaurant more the second time around and sat ourselves up on the 4th level inside, by the west patio. We were looking at the food menus and were greeted by a waitress with long brown hair tied back in a hair claw clip and flared black jeans. She was nice enough at first, but still had a presence that felt like we were inconveniencing her and weren’t ordering our drinks quick enough. One of us got an alcoholic drink whereas the other got a shirley temple. The drinks were nothing to write home about and we were pretty much deliberately ignored for the rest of our time here. We got our food and halfway through eating, we both finished our drinks. We sat almost 15 minutes completely empty on our drinks and as our “waitress” (if you can call her that) walked right by us after looking directly at our table and seeing that our drinks were empty. The next time she walked by I had to ask her if we could have refills. Again she seemed inconvenienced to be doing her one and only job. (she was 1 of at least 3 other servers and there was a busboy, so she wasn’t bussing her own tables) Multiple times we saw her standing around at the bar doing absolutely nothing and just looking at her Toast machine used for payment. After we asked for refills, it took almost another 15 minutes to get them and I almost just asked the cancel them. After this we finished our 2nd round of drinks and were sitting for another 15-20 minutes without even being spoken to. Multiple times she made eye contact and didn’t ask if we wanted another drink or if we were ready to close our tab. At one point she wasn’t even going by our table and we had to ask another server if they could get our waitress so we could close our tab. They looked as if they had had to deal with this type of behavior and lack of service multiple times and gladly rang us up on their own machine. I wouldn’t recommend this establishment unless they start to care more about the employees the...