Buffalo Wild Wings — Restaurant in Champlin

AWFUL, AWFUL, AWFUL!!!

My wife and I came in on a Monday night around 8pm with our 2 older boys after the Twins game was rained out earlier. The place was not busy by any means, so we figured things would move quickly and service wouldn't be a problem - so much for assumptions.

As we came in, a young lady who I thought was a hostess approached the front check-in, looking like she would assist us in getting seated. Instead, she simply dropped some silverware at the front, turned and wandered off across the restaurant - no acknowledgement, no "hi, someone will be with you shortly" - didn't even look at us. I looked at my wife and said how strange that was, especially since the place was dead.

Luckily, the "actual" host approached shortly after that. Nice guy, got us seated, got our boys tablets to play with. He also was our server which made sense since it was quiet. He took our drink order, and my wife had ordered a beverage which he "forgot" about and she had to ask about again. She finally rec'd it after a delay but we were his only table. Yikes, not a good start.

We ordered an appetizer which was fine, then our food. We waited longer than I would have expected for such a quiet night - not a long wait, but that length of wait was more appropriate for a busy night. Finally rec'd our food - I don't order wings there anymore, because they really aren't that good (who knew? A wing place with bad wings?) but my wife and boys did. Not great - average wings at best.

I also had ordered garlic fries with my burger as an add-on (on the menu) but the server brought me regular fries instead with my burger. He apologized, and said "keep the regular fries" and brought the garlic fries in a small basket after a short wait. I really would have preferred a discount here - I am not interested in keeping the WRONG order of fries as a makeup for the error. He didn't give me the option for that, nor do I suspect would that have been possible. If anything, the burger was decent.

It was getting late, so we were hoping to finish up and get home. As we were finishing our meal, the server stated that he "had to transfer our table to another server" because he was done for the night. Uuuuh....OK?? We were nearly done, and he had to leave rather than stay until we were done - maybe another 15 minutes. Very poor customer service. What's WORSE is that as we were finishing after he "transferred" us, he was still walking around the restaurant - in and out of the kitchen, the restroom, the bar - etc. WTH!! He ultimately left 5 minutes before we did, and he only beat us out the door because his "relief" was slow as molasses in getting us our check.

The relief server only handled us for a short time, but he was AWOL when we needed the check - which we were trying to get out the door because my boys had school in the morning.

Make an effort to visit a different BW3 nearby as opposed to this one in Champlin - this was my 3rd visit and the food is average at best while the service continues to be...

Well, it’d been a while since I was at this BW because of past disappointments but Culver’s had closed at 7 PM so I thought what the heck I will come here since it is close.

First, I walked in and whoa, it’s wide open seating, so I found a seat near the old cashier’s stand. You order through your phone now if you have time me which had me a little worried.

Second I asked about the bogo and was kindly reminded it was WEDNESDAY LOL, I thought it was Tuesday. In my defense I’d just come from the gym as was a bit out of it. But they were awesome polite.

Third, I really was considering leaving since no special meant it was a bigger gamble to be disappointed. I’m not kidding, this BW had been let down after let down for two years, grant it the second year was the pandemic but if taking that into account it failed muster.

The server did say the limited time Dorito crusted wings were pretty tasty. They did look intriguing so I decided to order them and some fried pickles through the dining in website. I wondered if I could get some water after ordering and decided to look at the menu and water was one there at no charge and you can add to you order after that first submission if you don’t cash out so that was great and easy.

My water came soon after, the food took a bit and worry was setting in again when out it came. I wondered why the pickles didn’t come out first and when I bit one it was like warm. I tried another in the center and it too was meh Luke warm. The server I think noticed my disappointment and asked how it was and I said like warm.

She insisted to get me a fresh batch with out hesitation. I was not so sure as I thought oh great this will take a while. Let’s just say I was WAY TOO gun shy due to past experiences. They came out quick and were piping hot!! Nice.

Plus while I waited for them I set in on the Dorito Spicy Sweet Chili boneless wings that were nice, hot, fresh, and WOW TASTY! Two thumbs up in this concoction.

All the whole the severs were all polite and checked in periodically the entire time. Which is why I decided to write this novella. Lol

It was really nice to get great service. Sure one could ask “what about the pickles initially?” Hey it’s how you finish and my overall experience was great! They are back on my radar for sure! It might take a few visits to make me less gun shy but it won’t be so long till I am back. Might even have to make in soon enough for another try of those Dorito Spicy Sweet Chili wings!!

P.S. With the new dine in app I thought as I left, had I ordered the pickles first with the water and waited for the wings a little bit after would’ve been a better move. I...

This has happened two separate times at separate location, weeks apart. When we are in your restaurant locations your app and website quite working, it requests that we have a code sent to log in, we request it and don’t receive the codes the entire time we are at the restaurant eating our meal. Then 5 minutes after we leave all of the codes come in at once. It has become very clear to me that you block your website and app while in your locations so as to not have customers redeem rewards and deals. I know this to be true as prior to arriving, on multiple devices we access your website and app without issue, then after arriving, even showing your employee the discount online , we were told we needed to pull it up in the app, the app would not let us log back in, and then when we tried to reload the website, it would not allow us to, showed the employee this and they said to try incognito and to shut off the WiFi connection, restart the phone, re install the apps , everything and still could not get it to work. Then once we had left the restaurant, as you can see in the attached photo, all the codes came in, also both the app and website worked again. So, what do you plan to do with this intentional hindrance of customers using their rewards? Also the service was terrible, we arrived and there was no host to seat us, we were finally approached as we sat ourselves down at a booth as we had two infants with us, then no follow up, we got back up, went to the host station and grabbed menus, at which point the server took notice and said it was for them to grab. Well, then don’t leave us sitting for 5+ minutes, without so much as checking in beyond telling us to sit wherever as we are already doing so. Yes, this was a basically empty restaurant, one group of guys, 6-10 maybe, and one or two couples. The server followed us back to the booth and took our drink order, a pineapple mojito and beer . The mojito had no mint ( they were out) and was just pineapple juice. No alcohol. We asked the server to talk with the bartender about it 7-10 minutes later we see him sitting on his phone and has not done anything about the drink. We go over and he stands up next to us but says nothing, we have the drink re-made. Much better this time . We finally got water half way through the meal, Only because we got it ourselves when we were at the bar having the drink re-made. Absolutely...