McGregor Cafe — Restaurant in Fort Myers

August 16, 2023. We normally don’t leave reviews on social media. Today we are making an exception.

We have a Federally licensed service animal, small breed and professional working dog.

Part 1, 1:00 pm ish, not very busy. Hostess was an older lady with maybe the worst front of house skills I’ve witnessed. Conversation went like this.

“How many?” “Two please”, “outside?” “No inside”, “the dog can’t come inside, we don’t have a license for that”, “the dog is a service animal”, “we don’t have a license for that either”. As my head about exploded from the lack of ADA education and pure rudeness, I responded by wanting to speak with her Manager. She left, was back in 45 seconds and agreed to seat us. Red flags going off in my head saying stop and walk away.

As we were sitting down at a booth built for four, we seated the service animal in the booth, sitting on his pad which we take to ensure the dog doesn’t sit directly on a chair or other seating area knowing they rarely get wiped down.

Part 2, the same rude lady became aggressive and said “the dog has to sit on the floor”. Absolutely not, look At your floor. It was unsweept from previous people. Restaurants are required to allow a SA inside without unusual accommodations, example, I can’t make them add an additional chair.

We picked up a business card, told the lady she needed an education and left. Will never going back there.

Owner or Manager wouldn’t come out from back of house to speak with us. We also filed a formal complaint with the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act.

Lessons to be learned. Treat people how you want to be treated, if you don’t know, ask and when your internal Red Flags are popping up, remove yourself from the situation.

With that being said, we stopped in another local restaurant between Broadway and 1st Street. Not going to say the name because we’ve read other reviews where owner attacked the restaurant named in the review. The server had water for the service animal before we had water.

In closing, bad hostess and bad owner for allowing this behavior.

Keep your apologies, we will never be back.

August 18, 2023 Response to Owners Rely to my review. I was not able to reply to the owners review directly.

Let's be clear, your Hostess never asked the those two very important questions regarding Service Animals. You hostess said and I quote, "we don't have a licenses for dogs", me, "it's a Service Dog", "we don't have a license for Service Dogs either"!

The 11 lbs. dog was wearing a black harness with Service Dog patches on it while on a red leash with service animal tags on the leash. Very Clearly identified, which is not required by law.

The dog is a Federally Registered and Documented Service Animal with, guess what, a Federal Documentation Number. We know the regulations.

Also, this animal can sit at a seat with us at anytime. No, we can not make you add another seat to accommodate the Service Animal, it was a booth for 4, not a table for 2 and your floors were dirty. You not only are wrong, you are an arrogant fool.

You and your hostess and are not dog people, service animal people or good people. We took to reviews after how badly you treated us and obviously, we were correct to do so.

Enjoy your staff education from the ADA. We absolutely filed a complaint and will forward your nonsense reply that you copied and pasted from an internet search regarding Service Animals.

You are truly a poor leader of your staff who will make things up to cover your tail. You response doesn't match the facts. Accusing someone of having a fake service animal only reinforces that you need help with your anger...

I would bring my dogs as you were very dog friendly and there were not many restaurants that allowed this. You welcomed us with water for the dog and great food and drinks for me.  I lead a running group and we began coming to your restaurant after our runs on Saturday and Sunday mornings. There are many options for breakfast but we always thought you guys were the best and so accommodating. Last year in November we brought a homemade cake. We usually get together for breakfast but do something special when it is one of the girl’s birthdays. There were 8 of us. We brought a cake and waited to cut it until after we had eaten. We ordered mimosa’s and coffee as well. The waitress came over and told us that due to the “health department” we were unable to cut our cake and couldn’t bring our own desserts in. I didn’t understand that the health department would have an issue with a homemade cake we were consuming, not distributing, but you can have dogs all over the patio. We didn’t want to make a scene so we paid our bills and left. We then decided that First Watch or Crave would be our new choice for breakfast. We had not all returned together until this past weekend. We ran the downtown Fort Myers half marathon and decided that we would give you guys another try. We waited to be seated which we expected. As we were being seated we overheard a waitress say to a mother and her son that he can’t play with the sugar and that she would bring him toys. The mother explained she was putting them away and that someone else had already said they were bringing the toys. The waitress said, “THESE COST MONEY! HE CAN’T PLAY WITH THEM!” very harshly. I was with 6 women who all heard this and so we discussed how she could have handled it better. The “cake incident” came up and we all said the last time any of us were there was when that happened. We didn’t realize it had been a year to the day. Most of us have worked in the service industry and have been waitresses or hostesses. We understand the importance of your customer’s and keeping them happy while turning tables. The rest of our experience was not so well either. The waitress took our drink orders about 10 minutes after we sat, she delivered them and said she would be back to take our order after she grabbed a drink order. She took the drink order next to us, filled it and came back to take their breakfast order. She cleaned a table next to us and then served the food to the same table all before taking our order. Again, we had mimosas, coffee and water. We all ordered a meal and actually extra sides. This entire experience was disturbing again and I honestly don’t think I will...

Absolutely disgusted with the service and food. From the time we walked in the waitress was being rude, she may have been busy but none the less, she was short, snobby and overall rude. The artichoke dip was the worst I’ve had but I thought the sandwich I ordered might taste better, nope. It was an Italian sub (supposibly they’re known for it which I find extremely hard to believe). I took one bite and said nope it wasn’t for me. Now, others may enjoy it and that’s fine but this is what got me... Our waitress literally got our order about 15/20 minutes after we showed up, she brought the food out about 20 minutes after that and never showed her face again. There was another waitress that was helpful tho, she refilled our drinks and checked on us multiple times. She is the one I told that I didn’t like the sub, she said she would go see what she could do about it. Well our original waitress got ahold of my card, charged me full price and brought the card back without ever asking me how the food was. I mean nothing, didn’t offer anything else or anything, just told me there’s nothing that she will do. I mean is that customer service? I’m also a business owner and that is simply not how you do business, period. Didn’t offer a discount, didn’t offer to get me something different (that I would have paid for), I mean nothing... So I decided to talk to the owner of the restaurant, he seemed insulted that I didn’t enjoy his cooking. He literally told me that I was wrong, it did taste good! Then proceeded to walk away, trying to make me look like a fool. Well there was no way I wasn’t going to take the time to write this review after that, I’ve never written a bad review for ANY business but this left me blown away. How could this business have any good reviews? Did they just not like me because I have tattoos? Because I didn’t enjoy their food? I defiantly was never rude in the slightest even tho I was upset that I had just spent $30 dollars on the worst meal of my life, from a “restaurant”. Disgusted with the customer service, the waitress and the quality of food from this establishment. I hope nobody else waste their time with this place, please spend your money...