BW Blacksmith Coffee Co. Dawsonville, Ga — Restaurant in Georgia

Today is Sunday, May 04, 2025. At approximately 0830 AM, I ordered for my family through the drive-thru.

One of our menu items was the waffle bites. Sounds straightforward, right? We were well underway on our road trip and a few miles down the road when (thankfully) we saw a waffle bite that looked different, with something dark streaking through it. Initially horrified that it might be a bug leg, I took the waffle bite and carefully inspected it. Some in the car thought it might be a hair, but this was far too thick to be any hair. Then - I realized it was a piece of METAL. Metal. Like one of those metal bristles off a metal wire grill brush that NO ONE should still be using anywhere near food service. I took the waffle bite and bent it a little between fingers. Yep. Metal.

Appalled, we drove back to the restaurant and entered the drive thru line because I thought it might be more discreet and less embarrassing for them if I just quietly handled it through the drive thru. At the speaker box, I explained what had happened. The attendant offered to remake the menu item. No. Hard pass. There's metal shards in your food items. I'm not going to have you make me some more until you've investigated your processes to determine how the heck this even happened. She then countered with an offer to make a different menu item. Again, hard pass. There's metal shards in your food. This time it was I who countered with the option that they give me a refund. I was directed to pull forward to the window. All the while the car load of passengers were remarking on how abnormally not shocked the attendant was, some suggested this must be a regular occurrence, like "guys there's metal in the food again sigh this keeps happening."

The single waffle bites menu item was refunded to me. That was it. That's the story.

Now, I have worked in food service and food prep for nearly 20 years. Others in the car have a career in public safety, another a career in healthcare. All of us have been in some way engaged with the public at large in customer service to a high degree. You are a restaurant. You serve people the food they eat to live. This is a sacred trust. And, while I'm thrilled that your most recent food safety store is high, believe me we look for it everything we go out to eat, a customer FINDING METAL IN THEIR FOOD is not something to casually dismiss or respond to with a sheepish grin and a shoulder shrug. You screwed up. Somehow your processes broke down. Someplace in your daily processes a METAL SHARD was introduced into a FOOD ITEM.

At a bare minimum, here is what a reasonable person should expect your response to be: shock bordering on disbelief profusely apologetic go above and beyond to visibly demonstrate how sorry you are

Refund the entire bill. Get the manager involved, introduce the customer to the manager who will then take ownership of the process that caused this and the process that is going to remediate and fix this. Promise to investigate and get to the bottom of how it happened. Schedule a follow-up call with the customer in a couple of days to update them on what you've been able to discover and to make sure they are okay, you know, after possibly eating the PIECES OF METAL YOU PUT IN THEIR FOOD.

Suffice to say - we won't be back. We were appalled. Appalled at the metal in the waffle bite. Appalled by the lack of interest by employees when we brought it back. Appalled. The entire process left us deeply disappointed in the brand and the employees representing the process.

Do better....

First time at this coffee shop which is a little off the beaten path with the way they "revised" the GA-400/Dawson Forest Road intersection. My GF and I saw this place some time ago and I recall remarking that we should check it out. We finally did and it's definitely worth it. The coffee was good, the food was delicious, the service was excellent, and I have zero complaints. We didn't even tell the staff we had our dog with us (b/c we left her in a locked, but running vehicle because she seems to be having some trouble with the heat and we wanted to keep her cooled off), and they brought us two dog biscuits for our fur baby. To be clear: we're not sure what's up with the dog. My GF thinks she's not adjusted to the new, higher temperatures and I'm of the opinion that we need to get her checked out by the vet because she's drinking more than I recall and still panting in 70-ish degree weather - which is not hot; although I do acknowledge that we're all struggling with the wonky back and forth temperature changes. Anyhow, we will be back and I would...

The service is extremely slow, mind you when we first came in there was one car in the drive thru and one guy in front of us. It took 15 minutes to just take our order. They had one poor girl running the cashier and running out food. They have poor aliquoting of their workers, and need to have more people especially for a Sunday morning. After we got to order there were about 15 people behind us. The lady had to keep stopping for 10 minutes between each person she ordered to run food out. We came in at 10:25 and didn’t get to sit until 10:55, and didn’t get our food till much later. Another thing to note is the place may appear clean but there was black mold growing around the drink station and the tables...