You Need Pie! Diner — Restaurant in Estes Park

Current customers beware! I'm posting this negative review in hopes of bringing the poor business practices of the new owners to light.

In May, I received an email from Tiffany Jackson, new owner of the local diner, You Need Pie. The email was to customers who had placed wedding cake orders and said that You Need Pie is under new ownership and would therefore not be able to fulfill any previous wedding cake orders.  I had placed an order and paid the $50 deposit in February. The email said that someone from “their team” would be contacting us directly, and she assured us that our deposits would be returned in full.

I was in Estes Park for my wedding the week of July 8-16.  Since I had not yet heard from anyone or received a refund, I stopped into You Need Pie on July 11th to request my refund in person.  I was told that no one in the store could help me and I was encouraged to email Tiffany which I did at once. Tiffany responded promptly, asking for my mailing address and saying she would send my refund in the mail.  I provided my address and have still not received payment as of July 30th.

I emailed Tiffany again on July 23rd and July 27th and have yet to receive a response.  I called You Need Pie and asked for Tiffany on Monday, July 28th.  A staff member said she was not available and took my name and phone number and assured me that Tiffany would call me back.  On Wednesday morning, July 30th, I called again.  A staff member again took my name and number and said Tiffany was "in a short meeting" and would call me back right afterwards. (no response)  I called back in the evening and again, a staff member asked for my name and number and said Tiffany would return my call.  During the 3 phone calls I made, I told staff that I haven't received a response from Tiffany nor have I received the money she owes me.

At this point, it seems apparent that Tiffany is avoiding my calls, ignoring my emails, and delaying my refund.  I created a post on the Estes Park Brides Facebook page about my experience, and so far, two other people have reported similar experiences, and neither have received a refund. I also see that there are reports of others not receiving refunds listed on Google Reviews.

I am aware that You Need Pie has been a very popular business among tourists as well as locals for several years.  It seems shameful to me that Tiffany and her family have moved to town and are now running a business who's success and popularity were built over many years by someone else - while mistreating former customers and demonstrating poor business practices.  It is my hope to bring my and other brides' experiences to light to not only receive our deposit refunds, but to ensure that this issue does not continue and affect...

I don't understand what all the good reviews are about and think this place is overrated. We showed up excitedly after traveling from far away to try their pies. Well, we were seated right away, which is good. That's when things went downhill. They gave us their regular menus, but we just wanted to eat their pies because that's what they are known for. When our waitress came around, I asked for the dessert menu, to which she asked, "Do you just want pie?" And I said yes. She took the menus and said she'd be back with dessert menus. We never saw her again. We waited for what seemed about 20 min, and I finally saw our waitress again, and she legit walked by us and never came back with the dessert menu. Like it was blatant that she was ignoring us. My 2 year old was with us, and he was starting to get real impatient and fussy, which made the experience worse than it had to be. The employees were walking by us and ignoring us. At one point, we considered just walking out without having ordered anything. I flagged down the hostess and asked her for the dessert menus, which she then provided. Not even a minute later, a new waitress came to us and asked if we were ready to order. I said no, we needed more time because we just got the menu. She walked away and seemed kind of upset. Once we decided, we had to wait another 15 minutes or so for someone to help us. I ordered the cherry chocolate pie while my husband ordered the chocolate peanut butter pie. The pies themselves tasted OK, not great like everyone else makes them out to be. I could swear I found a hair in one of the cherries in my pie, but I didn't bother saying anything because we were already getting poor service. The cherry chocolate pie was actually not that good. In fact, not even my toddler would eat it. The chocolate peanut butter pie was good, though, but it wasn't the best pie I've ever eaten by a long shot. I'd rather eat a cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory. This place is VERY overrated, and the service was very poor. It's almost like they got upset because we just wanted to order pies (which is literally what they are known for). I honestly don't get what all the hype is about. And the pies weren't that...

Overall I would reccomend going here, but let me explain my rating first. There were many conflicting good and bad experiences that I had here. First, the good. This place has REALLY good food! I got a BLT and a make your own burrito here and both were amazing! The table service was also super kind and helpful! The atmosphere of this place is super cool and inviting! The gift shop is a must see and I would reccomend everyone to at least stop by and see what the restaurant is like! Now for the bad. The wait time here was painful. Almost 10 minutes of us standing outside while they tried to find a table, and when we finally got sat down, it was another 10 minutes before someone brought us a menu and took our order. We were already hungry and we were expecting this place to be a place for a quick bite to eat! Unfortunatly we were wrong. Then after the initial 20 minutes to just order our food, we waited another 40 minutes for our food to come out. There were some other things that contributed to a not so great experience (like watching people who came in and were seated after us, have their orders taken first, but that was just a singular experience and I'm sure not the normal) but the whole waiter/waitress situation was wierd. We were sat in the gift shop. Literally inside the gift shop, amongst the t-shirts and all the souvenirs (which tbh was kinda cool) But there were 4 other tables in there and each table had its own server. Which could be nice, but each server had other tables in the main building that they had to run back and forth to help. So it left us, who were in another building, to kind of be left wondering if they forgot about us! But overall, my thought on this place are, that it's a really fun and cool place to go. It has wonderful and amazing food, but the wait times and the overall service could be...