Duffy's Sports Grill — Restaurant in Florida

DON'T GO IN A GROUP and DON'T EXPECT TO HEAR A GAME. 20% automatic gratuity for groups with horrible slow service

Used to be a regular here for lunch, but got tired of the mediocre food. There are many better places nearby. I still occasionally go when friends or co-workers invite me. Until now. A group of fellow UCF fans invited my family. It was an absolute disaster. The way Duffy's handles groups is responsible. Different servers handling different parts of our group. One was attentive, the rest disappeared for long periods of time. Drinks were delivered by various other people who had no idea where the drinks were going. They literally walked around half of the restaurant asking "who had xxx?" I order a buy one get one beer ($11 for 22oz). Server came back and said "sorry, we are not carrying that anymore". I chose another. Guess what? She came back and told me they stopped carrying that too!! Ordered a third beer. It took 30 minutes to get the first beer. For our party of 6, half of our party's food came out 30 minutes after the other half. Again, another group of people delivering food not knowing where it goes, walking around asking "who had XXX?". Food was OK, but some orders were wrong. By the time we were done eating, all but one server stopped checking on our group. I had asked for my second beer but again ended up waiting 30 minutes for it to arrive. Not exaggerating, it was an hour and a half from when I order the original beer that I got the second. I would have drank more but I didn't have another hour and a half to wait! We literally gave up and my family decided to leave. Watched for our server so I could get her attention. It was 20 minutes before she came to a table near us. Left that table and walked back to the kitchen without looking around to see if anyone needed anything. I waited several more minutes and went looking for her. Found her and let her know I was ready for my check. A few minutes later she comes to the other table in our group and asks if they are ready for their check! It was not even the table she was serving!! 10 more minutes go by. I look for the manager and explain what is going on. I explained the slow confused service and then complete lack of service. Also explained that my company holds group events there and I'm telling her about this so they can fix the problems and help themselves. Return to our table - still no check. Go look for the server or the manager. Find the server at the POS terminal and then see the manager. Let her know I still don't have our check. 15 MORE MINUTES go by before a check is delivered. Most of our group is given checks even though my family is the only one who asked for a check. To top it off, the checks were wrong! Others commented the checks were a complete mess. We had 3 items on ours that were not ordered. The smart person in my group decided to go to the bar to get our check corrected. And now to double top off, they added a 20% gratuity!! I went to the manager again and told her that an automatic gratuity assumes a reasonable level of service which we did not get. We normally tip more than 20%, but if you apply a gratuity automatically, you better deliver 20% service or expect that I will say something. I told her they should be embarrassed for automatically adding the tip after I told her about the problems. The manager explained it was company policy and she could do nothing about it. I told her that 20% tip will cost Duffy's all of my business and my (large) work group's business.

Duffy's - if you want my business back, tell me what changes you have implemented to address...

Duffy's in Lake Mary has always been our go to place so we went last night (8/13/21) to celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary. We arrived at 8:26pm and the wait was only about five minutes but from the moment we asked for a table for 2 outside the young lady had a horrible attitude. She led us to a wet table right next to a table with 6 loud guests despite there being an abundance of empty tables. She gave the table a quick wipe and we had to dry off the seats ourselves. By 8:40 no one had come to the table to acknowledge our presence. At 8:42 the waitress came out with drinks for the table next to us and then walked straight to the table behind ours to ask them if they needed anything. She then walked right past us again not saying one word and not even making so much as eye contact. Up until that point my husband was trying to convince me that maybe they were understaffed but it became obvious that staffing was not an issue. At 8:50 we still had not been so much as looked at and then watched our waitress come back outside, ask the large party if they were doing ok and walked right to the table behind us and asked if they were ready for their next drink. She then went back inside through a different door so that she did not have to walk past our table making it clear she had no intention to serve us. When she returned with the drinks for the other table she once again came outside thru a side door, gave them their drinks and walked right back in thru the side door. I got up and went inside to inform someone of the total disregard we were experiencing but there was no one to be seen. I quickly noticed that more than half of the indoor tables were empty which confirmed that "busy" was not an excuse I would accept if we were told that. To top it off when I walked back outside it began to drizzle and once again there was no one around to ask if we could move to a table with an umbrella. We figured we could take it upon ourselves to move to an umbrella covered table but it was now 9pm and a full thirty minutes had passed since we had been seated so what point would that make? We were already invisible to everyone working there. My husband was becoming angry at this point and we decided to leave. I went back inside to inform the front desk that no one had even looked at us let alone spoke to us. Unfortunately after spending another five minutes waiting no one ever came to the desk. All told, from the time we arrived until the time we left was 40 minutes. As we walked out to our car we saw the waitress come outside and ask the other patrons where we were and they told her we had left. She just shrugged her shoulders, took the menus and flatware off the table and walked back inside. I was beyond shocked at this experience because it was not the level of service we have always enjoyed before (and we are MVP card members). My other family members are also MVP members and between all of us we eat at Duffy's several times a month. I'm not sure if we will be returning which makes me sad because of our love for this establishment. I never post restaurant reviews online but this experience was very disheartening and I felt the need to share it on Google and with my family and let them make their own decisions about continuing to visit this restaurant. I hope that someone in a management position views this post and determines how this scenario could ever...

AVOID THIS PLACE!!!

This place has really gone downhill! I returned tonight after staying away since covid. They weren't busy at all, so there's no excuse for the bar & floors to be as sticky as I'd they mopped them with maple syrup. The bar area AC was broken, and even though they installed a temporary unit nearby, it was not sufficient to make the place comfortable. I spoke to the manager, and asked to be moved to a cooler location. She did. Then, I asked her to transfer my tab to the table; she said she would, but I had no service for more than 30 minutes. I asked one of the servers walking by if this was her table. She said she had been cut early and walked off. Later, she came back and said she was back on the clock. I asked her for a second beer and for some truffle fries. The fries were frigid, soggy and limp! I sent them back without ordering a replacement. The manager never came to speak to me! Obviously, I will not be coming back! I expect this place to die very soon, since there are several other, better new restaurant/bars opening nearby.

UPDATE AFTER RECEIVING MY TAB: I noticed there was a $5 cover on my tab, I guess because of the UFC fights. I did not know about this nor did any of my bartenders/servers tell me at any time. When I brought it up to my server, her attitude completely changed to negative and she wouldn't consider taking the cover charge off my bill, so I asked for the manager. When the manager came by, the first thing she said was that she had read my review above, which I had posted while sitting there - a mistake I won't make again. After I told her about the cover charge, she informed me that there was a big sign by the entrance, to which I answered that there was a bunch of people waiting to be seated and may have blocked the sign. Regardless, as I walked in none of the hosts/hostesses who were in that area mentioned anything to me about a cover. When I sat at the bar, nothing was brought up either. The manager told me they had always charged covers for UFC fights since she had been there, to which I answered that I had not been there since covid, and they never charged covers before that. She would not budge, so I told her whatever and kept watching the fights - I will dispute this charge with my bank. As you can see in the attached pic, the sign was placed against the host podium - anyone standing there, waiting to be seated,...