K&L Wine Merchants — Restaurant in California

Uncaring, Unprepared, Unprofessional

K&L cut the lock to my wine locker, removed my wine, removed the wine from my storage boxes, then stole those boxes. They did absolutely nothing to find the owner of the wine, me, deciding instead to sit around and wait for someone to show up and claim it. K&L failed me as a customer, blamed me for what happened, then refused to accept any reasonable suggestions for how to change their processes to prevent a similar outcome in the future. Unprofessional doesn’t begin to describe the behavior of everyone I encountered, including the owner Todd Z, in this process. If I had read a review like this prior to deciding to rent a storage locker from K&L, I would certainly have looked elsewhere. Hopefully, I can save someone the unpleasant treatment I received, which is why I’m writing this summary.

After all that I assumed the owner of a seemingly respected business would be empathetic to my experience as a customer. Surely this extremely poor outcome was worthy of a retrospective review and some post mortem analysis. I was wrong. The owner, Todd Z, over email and then over the phone, could hardly muster even a simple apology. He claimed this situation was so far “outside the norm” that his staff simply didn’t know how to handle it. He doesn’t think much of his staff, apparently. More concerning was he blamed me for the outcome. It was my fault I was shown to the wrong locker, my lock was cut, nothing was done to find me, and my storage boxes were stolen. Being decent isn’t hard, but does require some capacity for empathy and self-reflection. These are clearly in short supply at K&L.

In the end, I was refunded all of the money I was charged for the wine storage, and reimbursed for the boxes that were stolen. Hardly the point. If you're looking for cellaring, do some homework. There are better...

My first experience with K&L began in 1979. I was a roadie on tour and we had played the Cow Palace, slept on the bus after the show and started heading south when we realized we had no beer. A full page newspaper ad for K&L prompted us to detour a bit and about noon we pulled the bus up front and a bunch of tired, smelly roadies invaded the store. What I remember is one sales person who kept telling us they had a special deal on Lowenbrau, a beer that was forbidden on our bus. Instead we got our 8 cases of Heineken, 4 quarts of Jack and headed on our way. I settled in this area many years ago and started regularly ordering my French and high end California wines from K&L and was never disappointed. Top quality, helpful staff. Always. During the pandemic I had a clean up day and started going through all the boxes of papers and other tour memories and to my amazement found that same full page K&L ad from 1979 that sent us there the first time. I had to wait a bit for the store to open for customers again and when it did I ordered online and went in to pick it up bringing the 40 year old newspaper with me. I gave it to the staff to keep and while I was telling them the road story an older staff member said "I remember that morning. We just opened up for the day and that was me." Too long ago to remember faces or names but still a good laugh. I hope they framed the ad. Thanks for all the great booze over the years K&L. Great store, GREAT...

K&L is the best wine shop on the Peninsula and in all the Bay Area. Starting with an amazing and deep selection of wines from all over the world. Very knowledgeable people working there who will help you find what you are looking for and just to talk to about wine. They have buyers who will search for things you want but are not in stock. An incredible online website that is easy to you, incredibly informative and comprehensive. They do home delivery of wine. They have an auction house for buying or selling your wine online. They have temperature controlled wine storage lockers that you can rent. Just an incredibly well run operation. And very fair prices. Highest...