Flip's Pancake House — Restaurant in Moline

TL;DR - There are too many great places to get breakfast in the QC to justify giving this insolent owner any more money.

I've never left a bad review before. But my experience at this restaurant today really left a bad taste in my mouth. And seeing similar issues in the reviews here I felt compelled to let people know there is truth to the bad reviews regarding the owner.

I grew up in a family owned business and have worked for years in a restaurant. So I am not ignorant to the difficulties of the job and I know how challenging customers can be. So I generally go out of my way to be a good customer. And I generally stick to the idea of keeping my mouth shut when I don't have nice things to say.

Now I have frequented this restaurant with my family and have brought many friends here for meals. Today I came in by myself. There were three tables open, and three more that were having their plates cleared. So since I was by myself I took the smallest table I could that was out of the way. The waitress comes and gives me a menu and takes my drink order. Then the owner came over, took my menu and asked "are you by yourself or is anyone else going to join you?" I said it was just me. He says "then you can go over there, that's for people eating alone." Pointing to the bar seating.

It irked me a little as it's not the way I was taught to handle those situations. And there was no line of people waiting. But I get the whole seating thing so I moved anyway. As I sat and ate my meal I heard him pull another customer away from a table for the same reason. He was being very rude to the guy about it. When the guy said that he had more people coming the owner replied "well if they show up then we will see but these tables are for the people that are here." Then points him to a seat at the bar. By this time I have my food. Then he pulls a waitress behind the bar, and right in front of me starts telling her not to let lone people sit at the tables and "if they don't like it that's too bad."

Then five minutes later when the owner is cashing out someone else, he gets upset with the customer who the owner had waiting at the bar for his family because he was 'crowding the cash register' but he was SITTING IN THE SEAT THE OWNER PUT HIM IN. He starts shooing him off, so that guy just leaves altogether.

I get my ticket, I go to pay. Thinking the nightmare was over. He asks me how everything was. Trying not to make anything worse I just said "the food was good and the waitress was great." He replies with "but the owner's an a**hole right?" I said "well like you said, if I don't like it that's too bad." And he flips out saying he's never said anything like that in 14 years. Like I didn't hear him say it just 5 feet from me. I just paid my bill and told him I'd never be a problem...

Enter at your own risk... ---- Myself and 4 others have been going to this restaurant every other week for over 2 years. Service has always been stellar. We all order breakfast on each trip and give 20% tip to the staff because they deserve it. The prices have all gone up and that was ok and not a deal breaker after they changed names and ownership. Businesses have a lot of expenses to cover and that is understood. Today the "new" owner approached our table and I am still dumbfounded at his demeanor and rudeness. (we never met him before) He told us we had been there too long. It had been just less than an hour. (same as always) But, knowing he wanted us to move on we were hurriedly gathering our things and I told him multiple times we understood and he continued to repeat himself and started lecturing. He saw we were discussing business subjects and said you can't hold meetings here and told us we had been there 2 hours. (WRONG -- our meeting is every other week 8:30am to 9:30am) The last thing I would like to do is take up space or keep someone else from having breakfast. A quick polite comment and we would have run out of there apologizing all the way. There were open tables but that's probably besides the point, it's his restaurant. He proceeded to lecture us in a repetitive, condescending, manner that was extremely insulting. I'm not your child. He seemed like he wanted to make us furious and eventually it worked. I can only take a little bit of that kind of ignorance. I blew my cork as I left. He clapped with glee. I've lived in this town for 20+ years and never had anything like this happen. People who know us wouldn't believe that we would end up in that type of confrontation. Wow still scratching my head. Never again... Ross has great breakfast and very friendly/ appreciate...

We came here on Sunday around 12:45pm and our server was so rude it ruined our entire morning. It was just me and my girlfriend, we got sat at a table and our server (she was an older lady, we didn’t catch her name) didn’t even greet us, she just asked if we were going to get other drinks besides water. She then asked if we could order and when we told her we needed some time with the menu, she would come over to the table every thirty seconds (I’m not exaggerating, she was rushing us and was horribly rude and didn’t want us there). She seemed annoyed with us and wasn’t friendly at all. We were going to say something to her and request a different server but we didn’t want to deal with the hassle. When our food was brought out she put our check down and walked away. We hadn’t even ate yet! No other table got treated this way. All the other servers were nice and friendly. I don’t know how she is able to hold a job if she treats people this way. Appalling. We always tip 20% or more but we didn’t tip because of how horrible our experience was, don’t treat people...