Joe's Pizza & Pasta — Restaurant in Mount Vernon

We all know that sometimes, despite a business’s best efforts to perform well, and for all kinds of reasons many would find ‘understandable,’ they occasionally fall short. And usually, when they do, they make it right. I mean, the very fact that you’re reading this review right now is an indication of just how tied customer service has become to the feedback loop. Which is why I was so surprised and disappointed with my experience this evening with Joe’s.

I’ve got no beef with Joe, and I had every reason to expect a great outcome with my order this evening. We have checked into a local hotel — a respite for a birthday weekend for my 7-year-old daughter, just a short drive from our home in nearby St. Louis. The clerk on duty when we checked in actually recommended Joe’s. So we called as soon as we unpacked at around 2:30 and asked for a 6:30 PM delivery of two large pizzas a couple of salads and a 2 L bottle of soda. The food arrived at about 6:05. We weren’t terribly concerned about it being early, and we tipped the delivery person $10, but when we opened the boxes, the pizzas were both stone cold. I don’t mean ‘not piping hot,’ and I don’t mean ‘luke warm,’ I mean ‘stone cold.’ Our family had been looking forward to a little pizza party with one of my daughter’s best friends, who had come over separately to enjoy a little swimming with us at the hotel.

Everybody was starving by the time the food arrived, and the younger kids decided to eat a few pieces anyway, although nobody was happy with the quality of the food. Again, this was stone cold pizza for which we had just paid $40 plus a $10 tip. They had also neglected to include our two salads in the order. Not fatal, but disappointing. I called the restaurant immediately and asked to speak with the manager. I was given someone who said that she was the manager, but once we began talking about the issue, it became clear she did not have decision making authority. I let her know that our pizzas had arrived cold, and that we were dissatisfied but were willing to let it go if they would simply refund our credit card payment. She stepped away from the phone for about a minute, evidently to discuss the matter with someone who did have the authority, but when she came back all she could offer was a store credit. I told her that would do me no good, as we did not reside in the area and did not expect to be back anytime soon. She then offered to re-bake the pizzas and deliver them hot, which was an OK solution, but I knew that with swimming on order and the kids having already eaten a few pieces of cold pizza, they weren’t likely to want to stick around another 30-plus minutes waiting for pizza that should’ve been delivered hot the first time. I agreed to the re-bake and hot delivery. She seemed to doubt my original complaint as evidenced by her insistence that the driver would need to recover the original pizzas if she was to replace them.

Okay, so deliver cold pizzas, ask me to wait 40 minutes until you can get me hot ones, tell my kids to not touch the pizzas you’re going to throw away anyway and expect repeat business or positive recommendations? Ummm, no.

All-in-all, this was just handled poorly. Despite my query to confirm that she was, in fact, the manager, I learned later that the young woman I was speaking with was not the store manager with whom managerial authority was vested. That would, evidently, be ‘Ben.’ Ben never came to the phone when I asked earlier to speak with a manager. Ben didn’t handle this with accountability befitting a manager.

To you, Joe’s Pizza & Pasta, maybe it’s just another order. But people celebrate with pizza. It’s part of an event for them. Its quality actually matters, and temperature is kind of a big deal in the quality department.

Next time, when your customer calls before your delivery guy is even out the front door of the hotel to say the pizza is stone cold, believe him and make it right. That would have earned a 5-star review and not a...

As far as I can remember I've only been to this chain restaurant once and I know I've only been to it once since I started right reviews or typing up reviews for this it was good place I liked it I went there on Wednesday and apparently at least at that location or for the franchise it's all you can eat spaghetti on Wednesday and when I asked them to go ahead and tell me specials tell me what's good tell me what's recommended cuz I've never been to one as far as I could remember they really forgot to mention that it was all you could eat Wednesday spaghetti night and apparently that's what a good majority of what the customer and I did confront them about that and they said we're sorry we was we was honestly just telling you what we prefer here when we eat here and in their defense it was really good I had chicken marinara and I'm real hesitant to eat chicken out because over the years across the United States I've had chicken at different places and that's the number one corporate for when I've had food poisoning at all sorts of chains Burger King's McDonald's is Dairy Queen's Sonic's and all sorts of places that I can't even...

3/23/2022 12:20 pm Horrible customer service! We're from out of state and this place was recommended to us by the hotel we're staying at. Not only did they get our pizza completely wrong but we also received cold bread sticks. Then when we called to inform them they didn't care! We just spent almost $60 on a lunch that they got wrong (they tried to tell us it was our fault) and we weren't happy about it and just wanted our correct order done and we wanted it hot. Both people we spoke with (one worker and one manager) were very argumentative and rude. We asked for a higher up manager but she said there wasn't one. So we asked to talk to the owner, she said he was out of town and she can't give his number out so there's no way that we can talk to him!!!! We asked if they could replace our pizza with the correct one and fresh hot breadsticks and she, the manager, said she could redo the breadsticks but there's nothing she'd do about the pizza. We wouldn't recommend this place if it were the only pizza parlor in the...