Harmony Brewing Company — Restaurant in Grand Rapids

REVIEW UPDATE!

HARMONY IS GOOD AGAIN!

My initial review slammed the brewery for its excruciatingly slow service (due to an understaffed back of house and mismanagement - the servers themselves are and were great.) But after nearly a year I started to revisit this and have been pleasantly surprised to see that they've really turned things around. Kitchen is faster, service is great, and the food is, too.

This place is GREAT.

(My old review, keeping it up for posterity): Excellent beer, wonderful servers, ruined by new management & an unbelievably slow back of house.

If you order food don't expect to receive it for AT LEAST an hour: if you receive it at all!

And this isn't for big orders from big parties. Even appetizers for one take over AN HOUR to arrive at your table. I've been here a few times since moving to GR in April and while the beer, cocktails, and front of house staff are all spectacular, the kitchen is SO slow. Every time the kitchen/back of house is glacially slow (because I never see more than one poor soul back there making pizzas behind a mountain of to go orders - this is a management/staffing issue, NOT an issue with the boots on the ground).

To add insult to injury these poor staffers are constantly running between hungry and impatient tables carrying boxes upon boxes of togo pizzas. If management can't staff the kitchen well enough to keep up with a half-full Tuesday afternoon crowd, why on earth are they taking dozens upon dozens of to go pizza orders?

Management: Either stop to go orders and triple your kitchen staff & capacity or pass management of this otherwise wonderful Easttown staple to someone who can...

All I can say is I was very very disappointed today with Harmony. After a fun hour at BizBaz I took my parents over for a small bite and a beer. We walked in and stood at the wait to be seated sign and for 10 minutes no one acknowledged we were even there. We were not the only ones waiting. Eventually the barmaid came over but only to shout at the people in the doorway that she had to have the door closed as they have an open air kitchen. She then went back behind the bar and along with all of her other colleagues, continues to ignore us all waiting. Eventually I ask a girl if we were supposed to wait or if we could self seat at one of the many empty tables. She told me that she was almost clear and would come to help us soon. She then proceeds to stand in full view of us all and chat to a couple of her colleagues for what felt forever. Eventually she did come to the front. Looked to the family behind us to ask how many. My father who is in from England on a visit was by this time very annoyed and stated that she knew we were next and should be seating us. To which she huffed a very deep sigh and told us we would have to wait a further 20 minutes. We along with several other families left. I understand being busy, but if you continue to treat clients that way, you won’t have to worry about busyness for long. We voted with our feet. Shame. Customer Service is not what...

Went yesterday (Sunday) and I can say I have never had a dining experiences with such incredibly poor service and a staff so disgruntled, flustered, and outwardly angry that it made us leave after one drink. It stinks to have to write a review about a place when it does not reflect the food/beer... But the overall service experiences was JUST THAT BAD

Upon arriving we were seated and after 10 minutes ended up getting up to go sit at the bar because we were never attended to. This is even after getting the waitress's attention to try and get her to attend to our drink orders, to which acknowledged and ignored. Icing on the cake was that in this 10 minutes time, two other groups that actually arrived after we did we received service.

Then, while sitting at the bar the chef came out from the kitchen yelling about how he can't do his job... The waitress clearly could not handle the groups she had, nor figure out how to seat people (it wasn't that busy)... When another group complained that they hadn't been served yet, she proclaimed she didn't know they were there (they were seated RIGHT right next to the table she had just served). What appeared to be an employee who had just stopped in to drink with friends and not on the clock, actually had to jump in and help try to organize the chaos.

Love Harmony, but won't be coming back to this location...