Peppermint Paddy’s — Restaurant in Montana

First time visitors and dont know if there will be a second time. @6:45 it took them 30 minutes to make a plain hamburger, Fries, and what they called a Halibut sandwich. First the food, the fries and hamburger were ok as hamburgers go, you order it plain on the first time out to see how the meat is they use. It was frozen. The halibut was the same way, frozen fish sticks. We are land locked here so I dont know why I would have had expectations of fresh fish. But when they finally brought out the food, I asked if 30 minutes was the norm, the cook, told me they were having a hard time adjusting to taking online orders, and in house orders and wanted to know if I had any suggestions. Yes I do and here they come.

First and foremost you need to understand your business model and dont try to be something you're not. Are you a sit down restaurant or are you a take out restaurant? If you want to be both, you start in house, and then graduate by taking phone orders. You do that because the phone will control the flow of how many orders can come in so you can keep up.

First rule of customer service, you always take care of the customer in front of you first. You would think First come first serve First in first out philosophy, but you cant keep moving outside orders to the side in lieu of the in-house orders.

The two companies that come to mind that own this feat are Wendy's and Dominoes. Both of witch I worked at as a teen and continue to be impressed by their performance. Wendy's does it and here in Butte, they are unbelievably efficient more so than any other Wendy's I think I have encountered and they do it by having two dedicated grills, one covers drive through and the other covers door dash and in house customers. All Wendys are built this way, but they dont all have enough business to justify using them both all the time. Regardless, they do it that way so they dont step on each other. Dominoes model does walk in, phone and web orders and they manage it by assembly line and first come first serve. First in first out. They know exactly how long it takes to make a pizza, and put it on the oven and know exactly how long it takes to come out of the oven regardless of whats on the pizza.

Your solution is somewhat complicated because you have a diverse menu. You are trying to cater to a lot of different people which is fine, but you have to manage it. If you want your business model to be in house and online orders, the only way to make that work is to understand the schedule of when you are most occupied in house verse what are the heavy times for online orders, and then you have a dedicated person who cooks, online orders and another dedicated person who cooks in house orders. You made need two grills depending on how big the grill is, and you can share the deep fryer. If you get greedy too quickly and are not prepared to deal with it, your reviews will end up like this. The only reason you have the reviews you have is because people in the area are not used to anything else and have come accustomed to it. Your food is not spectacular, so that means the service needs to be to make up for it.

To wrap this up, you put food down in front of 8 people that were their after us and the food was subpar. One might say if we dont like it dont come back, the jury is out...

Disrespecful owner! We ordered take out. Once we got home and started eating our hamburgers they were not done and pink. We called, they asked us to bring them back. We assumed they would just replace them. But not hardly! They took the burgers to the back to examine them. The owner came out of the kitchen shouting did you just not like your burgers is that the problem. We informed her that the hamburgers were pink and undercooked which she refused to listen to. She was completely disrespectful and out of place as a business owner. She would not stop talking or berating us. She then slapped twenty two dollars on the counter and said here money out of my pocket. Actually I had just put that twenty two dollars in her pocket with another eighteen. I finally could get a word in edge wise and informed her we loved their food normally and had She just corrected the error we would have been happy. But she chose to berate and talk down to us. One thing I refuse to do is argue and especially about a pink hamburger being undercooked. The reason we won't be back is the disrespectful way she treated us and her MOUTH! From what I can tell on the reply to any bad review for this establishment she is very spiteful instead of attempting to resolve any problem and putting her customers first it is...

The food was AMAZING! I had double bacon cheeseburger, my wife had pork chop sandwich, my son had pork nuggets, and my other two kiddos also had burgers. We all had fried cheese balls, and jalapeno cheese stick. We loved this place! The staff was very nice! The food was just simply amazing like I said before! My wife hadn't ate there in almost 20 years. She has always wanted me to eat there. We live in Oklahoma, although she is from Montana, and I'm from North Carolina. We are foodies! We try to eat at small cafes, or any mom and pops places. Thank you for such good food, and service Peppermint Patty's!! We will definitely eat there on our next trip to Montana! The food at this restaurant made my whole entire 2 week trip worth while! Wish we had a place like that around the town I live in. DO NOT even think about passing this place by, that would be a...