Lansing Brewing Company — Restaurant in Lansing

I consistently have issues with service here. I am local who lives downtown, loves their beer, and I really want to like this place. But every single time I come here something goes wrong.

I went there for a night out a couple weeks ago with some girlfriends. We each ordered a beer and the cauliflower "wings" to share. I've ordered the wings there before, and received a large basket with at least 10-15 wings. Well when the food arrived, it was underwhelming - a basket with a very small portion of 4-5 medium sized pieces. I took a picture and attached it to this review. My boyfriend went there a couple weeks ago to get his growler filled up. He entered the restaurant, didn't see a hostess anywhere, and took a seat at the bar. The bartender saw him and immediately starting freaking out "No no no no no no you can't be here, this is private event" and shooed him out. It was very poor way to handle that situation. Last time I was here a friend was hosting a fundraiser in the back room. I asked the bartender to see the menu and he gave me a significantly paired down menu, which only had one vegetarian entree. The options are already really limited for people with dietary restrictions so I went up front to see the hostess and grabbed a full sized menu. I asked her if I could order food from this menu in the back. She told me I would have to order it at the bar and wait at the bar for it, but then I could walk it to the back room and eat there (where the fundraiser was happening)

First of all I don't understand why I couldn't just order from the bartender in the back and have him bring the food out to me. He has access to the same exact kitchen so it seems like it shouldn't be a big deal for someone with a dietary restriction to order off the other menu.

Next I went up to the front bar to order my food. At this point, the bartender from the back room approached me and told me that even if I ordered food here, I wouldn't be allowed to bring it to the other room to eat. I have no idea how the hell he even knew I was going to do that. But at this point I decided forget it, I'm not going to buy food here because the staff is not being accommodating and I didn't feel like spending my money here anymore.

I told my experience to the other people in my party. The women who was helping to organize the event had a similar story. The event was supposed to start at 5, but she arrived a few minutes early to set up. The staff told her that she was early, and tried to refuse her entry saying would have to come back at 5. They ended up letting her in after she threatened to make a few phone calls. Very strange. initial review: We called ahead for a party of 25 we were awkwardly split up into a table of 20 and a table of 5 even though the place was not busy at all and there is a huge back room that could easily be utilized for a large party The service was pretty slow (as in 15-20 minutes to even take our orders even though the place was dead) and the food was good but over-priced ($10-15 a plate for a small/medium size portion). ...

Do not bring your large party here!!!!!!!! I called LBC a week in advance to make a reservation for about 25 people for our holiday gathering. We had our holiday gathering there last year and had a good experience (we were allowed to make a reservation). They informed me they don't do reservations anymore, so a peer and I showed up an hour and a half early to ensure we could all be seated together. Upon arrival LBC told us they do not have a table big enough for 25 so we would not all be seated at the same table. We asked if we could at least be seated near each other to avoid running all around the restaurant. They told us they were unable to guarantee us seating together. We took a chance anyhow because it was too late to call/txt/email everyone and change the location. That was a HUGE mistake. They put 3 reservations under our names, 1 reservation for 10, another for 15 and the last for 8. I still do not understand why it had to be this complicated. They told us their largest table was 16 (it was open when we arrived) but couldn't seat us until half the party was there. We sat at the bar until more of our party showed up and next thing we knew, they gave half of that 16 person table to another party. They told us we could sit next to the other party, so we did in hopes they would leave soon. We went up to the hostess once we had exceeded capacity at that table and they told us they could sit us at 2, 4 top tables near our half table. That was fine. The managers came out and rudely told us not to "hover" over the people who were eating there when we were not. Since our table had exceed capacity and they wouldn't seat us, we were crowding around our own table. We were standing there with a 9 month old baby trying to figure out what to do and where to seat people. We asked if they could move those tables together and they initially said it wouldn't be a problem, but then told us we couldn't since the tables had different servers. In the end, the same server was serving those two tables so, again, I do not see why this was not possible. Now we have half a table of 8 seated with another party, a table diagonal of 4 and the table behind them of 5. The other table they told us we could have for our final people showing up they gave to another party. We ended up just grabbing the extra nearby 4 top table so we could seat the last 6 people. I don't understand the point of putting our name on a list for a table if they weren't going to honor those numbers (10,15,8). All in all, if you have more than a small party of people, I do not recommend going to LBC. They were EXTREMELY unaccommodating and one of their 2 managers was laughing at our requests and being rude. It made everyone's experience poor and stressful. I know several people in our party of 25 will not frequent this establishment again, let alone have our holiday gathering there. The only good thing about our experience was...

I want to preface this review by saying that my wife and I are currently mug club members at LBC and really loved this place at first. It actually sucks to give such a low review to a place I really wanted to love. But everytime we go in we are met by poorly trained staff and wrong hours. We met an old friend we haven’t seen in years here for dinner or at the very least a drink last Sunday at 5pm and we were met with a LOCKED front door. There was still customers eating outside and inside so we stood out front for a few minutes thinking someone would come along. Nope, no one did. They desperately need to get their hours right. Seems like everytime I’ve gone in the past couple of months they’ve been wrong. We ended up going down the road to sidecar slider bar where the food and drinks aren’t nearly as good as LBC but at least the servers know what they’re actually doing and we were served promptly. Also I called today to see about the promo they have posted on their Facebook pictured below. I’ve been wanting to try their Oktoberfest and figured if I could get a cool tacker sign with it that would be pretty sweet. When I asked I was put on hold for roughly 5 minutes just to be told “the contest ends tomorrow, then we will decide the winner of that”. I told the young lady you must of misunderstood me. It’s a sign you get with a 6 pack. It’s posted on Facebook. She said “oh! Facebook! Let me ask again” was put on hold again and when she came back she brought up the same exact contest. Clearly in the photo you can see this is not a “contest”. Seems every visit to LBC over the last couple months has been plagued with terrible training and confusion. My wife and I went roughly a month ago and the server had absolutely no idea that there was specials on the menu, and also had no idea the mug club even existed?? I had to explain to her, as the customer what the mug club was. Why? I really loved LBC at first, and had every intention of buying more merch and being a lifetime customer/club member. It felt like they really cared about Lansing, its history, and its people. But now it feels like just another corporation and their customers are just dollar...