Buffalo Wild Wings — Restaurant in Pinellas Park

To Customers:

If you dine here now, or plan to visit in the future, I say simply: Caveat Emptor -- Let the Buyer Beware (of Poor Management) at this store. I LOVE BDubs, but this location does NOT have the same types of people in charge as other Buffalo Wild Wings stores nationwide.

Here is my reasoning/side of the story and the justification for this negative review...

General Manager, ZACHARY refused service to me and my children. His managerial style is to harass and bully regular customers, particularly women.

Perhaps Zachary was having a difficult day? Or maybe it's simply because I am a successful businesswoman in a male-dominated industry, and Zachary's ego is too large to handle a powerful Chef and Food Critic who is not of the male gender?

None of this is my concern. Instead my focus, as a fellow Chef/Restauranteur/Patron, is on the new patrons and regular customers of the Buffalo Wild Wings Park location in St Pete. Food is my life. I want to see pleasurable, relaxed dining for ALL people.

I will NEVER return to this restaurant without an invitation from the owner, coupled with a sincere apology for what transpired during my last two visits. Both negative visits involved ZACHARY, the General Manager of the Park location.

As a former longtime employee of BW3 (the former name/business template for the current Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant chain model), I am appalled to see the level of service slide down SO very far at this store. It's deplorable and quite frankly, embarrassing.

What used to be a great spot to catch up on sports and play trivia while enjoying tasty bar food with an Arnold Palmer, quickly denigrated overnight into a situation of "Oh Gosh, I don't feel safe bringing my kids here for wings, Mac 'n Cheese, and steamed broccoli".

Yes, upon checking my receipts, I discovered I have dined at THIS VERY location not fewer than 25 times. Yes, I do my research. Wow!!

If the owner of the Park Avenue store is reading this review, I hope you will contact me personally to discuss how to improve and expand your business.

To have a GM who lies to you, routinely mistreats customers and staff, and and has a regular customer with such loyalty to your brand is awful. To treat any person SO poorly is criminal. I prefer peaceful, engaging attentive service, so I refuse to engage with people who insist on battering women or children.

Further, I refuse to mar my excellent reputation in the Food & Restaurant Industry by engaging with or interacting with the likes of someone (Zachary) of such low calibre and reputation.

To the Owner: Yes, I know your name, since I am actually who I say I am, and have vast resources and contacts within the Food Industry. To protect YOUR privacy, I refuse to reveal your name in this post.

Zachary has my phone number. Otherwise, you may reach out to me via LinkedIn and or social media. I wish to discuss this matter with you offline.

EDITED to add: The Service staff at the Park location is exemplary. I compliment them highly. In particular, Briana, Sydney, Kat, Emma, and Layla are attentive, courteous, efficient, speedy, and quick to help.

I wish I could let the Service Staff know how well-appreciated they truly are by so many patrons. I most certainly appreciate you, as well as all you have done to give top-notch service to my family, friends and...

They opened just over a month ago. We gave them time to work out the kinks, to get used to the system, and have some experience. Well, let us start with the wings were very yummy (the only positive to the experience) and service sucked (explanation below). We were seated fairly quickly; upon being seated we waited about 5 minutes for our server to arrive. We ordered 1 mixed drink, 1 glass of water, and 1 basket of fried pickles. The water came in about 3 minutes. About 10 minutes later we placed an order for 20 wings. Our server asked us if we wanted the 4 Celery and 4 Blue Cheese that come with that size wing order. We told him to bring what comes with that size order. Mind you we still have not received the Mix drink (ordered about 15 minutes ago). The pickles arrived BEFORE the mixed drink. After another 5 minutes the Mixed drink (only because we waved our server down and expressed to him, we had not receive the drink). At the time the drink arrived it was sweaty and had melted ice (You would think the BARTENDER would be screaming that a drink is setting there and it needs to be delivered as a customer is waiting). Just and I mean JUST after we received the mixed drink, the wings came. I cannot believe how long it took to get a DRINK. Our server checked on us one time. We had to wave him down for second mix drink, which by the way, did arrive within minutes (trying to save his tip). When we received the bill, we were charged for the 2 celery and 1 blue cheese at $ 0.60/each. Not only did we get poor service, our server charged us for items he clearly stated came with the wings. We were watching the overall service quality that other customers were being given and they were experiencing the same "quality of service" that we were. I would hate to see them go out of business because the wings were good. If they do not change how they service customers I can not see them being open much longer than a year (about how long it will take for enough of the population to go one time and not return). I will give them one more chance only because the wings...

I only gave 2 stars because I worked there and the servers I worked with were all very sweet and genuinely cared about providing good service. HOWEVER, just from my short time there I was disappointed, even if you put an order in correctly and clearly(from my experience) the food still comes out wrong. And takes forever to come out in the first place even when it's slow and add the time to remake it the right way on top of that, it's ridiculous. It affected my tips. The bartender named Jackie (again from my experience) takes a lot longer than normal to prepare drinks, multiple times even when it was slow it took about ten minutes to get a cocktail and a beer from her. THIS IS THE ONLY BWW LOCATION that takes 15% of total sales servers ring from their tips and gives it to the bartender who most of the time has poured 1 or 2 beers and very slowly, but it makes sense because it's an independent franchise location and the GM has a hard on for the slow and chubby bartender which came with him from another location and for her apparently anything goes. Every other location takes 3%, no idea why servers there put up with it, definitely wasn't working for me, especially with such awful and neglectful service from said bartender. Manager allowed her to curse and yell at me and did nothing, manager also has a 2 napkin per person limit and would send messages saying he wouldn't and couldn't order more napkins, I'm sorry but when I'm eating messy wings the last thing I want is to be limited on how many napkins I'm allowed to use, had I been a customer and had to ask repeatedly before a server was allowed to bring me more I'd be upset. So when the food and drinks are slow to come and you're wondering why your server didn't bring you more than 2 napkins, PLEASE dont blame your server, BLAME THE HORRIBLE MANAGEMENT. Great managerial skills! Warnings to anyone who wants to serve there, it's not worth...