Rise Southern Biscuits & Righteous Chicken - Durham Southpoint — Restaurant in Durham

I came in on a Thursday at 9:08am. They were already out of the lump crab omelets. On top of that, we never got our biscuits and the waitress completely ignored my son when he asked for some. We were brought the check before my son was even close to being finished at 9:24. I was going to get him their cherry drink, the "special drink" he had been asking for since we walked in the door, but since we were brought our check before we had the opportunity to order, so much for that idea. I felt like we were being pushed to leave, even though we were only one of 3 occupied tables and had only been there for less 30 minutes. My son was the only one eating since they were out of the only item i wanted to order. Is it my fault they were out of the item? NO. So I do not feel like i should be pushed to leave because of it. Especially since my son was still eating his breakfast. Its not like were were sitting there taking up space for the heck of it.

Then, to make a bad experience epicly worse, I went up to see if we could get biscuits, was given attitude, so I told the woman to forget it and grabbed our check to pay so we could leave, since our patronage obviously wasn't wanted. The same woman told me not to worry about it since I obviously wasn't happy. There was nothing wrong with my son's food and I don't believe in not paying for something there was no problem with. I told her, thank you, no, I prefer to go ahead and pay and she preceded to ball my check up in ny face and toss it in a trash can. While I appreciate the thought, if I want to pay, I want to pay. Take my money and be glad you're getting it, because that's the last money you will be getting from me or my family. I am already an upset customer and you just made me so much more upset! The last thing I want when I'm already upset is to be argued with and given more attitude along with an unfelt apology that managed to throw in excuses for the issues I was upset about. I don't care if your delivery truck comes later. I'm here now. To me, that just shows poor planning on your part that you didn't order enough in the first place to make it until your next order comes. Then this woman throws in the fact that she's the owner, like that reason alone should make me reevaluate my experience. If anything, it just makes me more angry that she obviously doesn't care enough to listen to what I am saying and thinks it can all be fixed by literally throwing away my check. If you are the owner, you seriously need to take a course in customer service! Antagonizing an already irate customer is never the route you want to take when resolving an issue. You need to understand that not everyone is comfortable with not paying for something, despite the horrible service, and respect that choice. LISTEN to what your customer is saying or you're going to keep losing customers. It's a shame, because the food here is pretty good. But in the triangle area, there are a lot of good restaurants, so customers don't have to put up with...

Terrible service with a smile. This place was okay when it first opened and it has gone downhill ever since. The biscuits/donuts are pretty good...hit or miss. The problem with Rise (in addition to being crowded, long lines, no place to sit, etc) is its customer service. Yesterday is a representative case: I went to rise and ordered two donuts (donut A & donut B) and two biscuits (biscuit A & biscuit B). I paid for those four items. I left ten minutes later with a bag they handed me when they called my name. I got to work, unpacked the bag. Donut A was in the bag, but no other donut (B or otherwise). There was only one biscuit in the bag -- and it was neither biscuit A nor biscuit B....just some crappy biscuit that I hadn't ordered and would not have ordered. Gross. Two bites and into the trash can. So for $10, I got one donut that I actually ordered, and it wasn't even that good. I got 50% of the quantity of food I'd ordered. 25% of the food I received was what I'd ordered.

So, you might think, "call the manager and he'll sort it out for sure!" Well, this is the third time in a row that something like this has happened. I called Rise the last two times. The first time, the manager was nice and gave me a partial refund. That sucked. It involved me driving back to Rise, taking time out of my busy day, and he only refunded a portion of my order. They got the order entirely wrong, so give me back my money. I'd ordered 12 donuts for the office, they gave me 7. Give me a refund on the 12 I'd paid for....not the 5 donuts that made the difference.

The time after that, it was a similar clusterfudge. I had to go back to Rise. Manager was not terribly apologetic. He gave me four dollars back and that was it. I am not looking for handouts, but I have worked in the food service industry for a while -- if I have to take thirty minutes out of my workday to drive to his restaurant to fix a mistake HIS RESTAURANT made, don't give me attitude and four dollars back. Give me a smile, apologize, give me a refund, offer me something to eat for my troubles. Nope, not at Rise.

I didn't bother calling Rise this most recent time (yesterday) because it is the same crap over and over again. It isn't just me...my friends are getting sick of this place too. This used to be the first place we'd think of meeting on Saturday for breakfast, but we hardly remember it now when we're coming up with a place. So-so donuts, hit or miss biscuits, and massively/consistently bad and inaccurate service. Not worth it.

What gets me riled up is that so many people hold out Rise to be the quintessential "Durham" type of place. It is quirky and hip and all that. Wrong. Durham has so many better offerings, so many more "Durham-esque" places to eat . . . and all of them, to a one, have this strange practice in place by which customers actually receive the food they...

Update 2 May 2022: they do have donuts now, but only a few, and they don't make enough to last past 10 am. They are much smaller and are less delicious then they used to be. Any grocery store donut will be as good or better. Sheetz has become our new donut place, sad. Dunkin is worse than a grocery store to me so not an option. Pretty soon restaurants will just have microwave vending machines, defeating the purpose of it being a restaurant in the first place.

Update 1: As of the past couple of weeks, No more doughnuts! They don't sell them. They just fell off the menu. The thing that made them unique and awesome is now gone.

Rise is essentially the same as Biscuitville now.. maybe with an even smaller menu and shorter hours. The biscuits are still good, though... and they use above average ingredients.. but this is not the foody place it once was.

Previously I reviewed a year ago or so: I've seen the rise (and fall) of this concept bakery. When it opened, there was a line out the door and down the sidewalk. The last time I went in, they had moved the donuts to the back, there is no case where you can drool over the donuts while you wait in line. The number of donuts has greatly diminished over the past year two as well. The creme brulee donut has much less filling now and, the donuts seem smaller and a little less fresh than a year ago.

The biscuits, are still pretty good. I've always gotten the same thing (bacon and egg) so I don't know if all the other options have changed. I don't think the bacon is the same quality that it once was, but it's still good enough.

I don't know what is happening but my guess is the business is changing to become more profitable and sustainable. It's not bad, it's just not as good as it once was. It went from being THE place to go to just being A place to go.

Good news is, you don't have to wait in line anymore.... And for dieters, you're not tempted by the donuts anymore either.

If you walk in here today, right off the street, having never heard of Rise, I think you would be met with a fairly acceptable but not particularly memorable...