Trace Brewing — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

This review pertains to my experience about a year ago (haven't been in since for obvious reasons that will follow... maybe things have changed since but judging by recent reviews probably not)

I visited this place a few times with some friends and the staff here got more and more rude, short, and curt with each visit. I try to not jump to conclusions at first encounters and assumed the bartender might have been having a bad day or overwhelming which I understand as having come from restaurant/customer service jobs. The other visits I noticed the same condescending, rude and almost hostile attitude from 1 bartender in particular, named Atiya (sp?) and I believe the manager or GM Katie. They both could not have gone out of their way to be more dismissive, cold and rude when literally just asking for suggestions or trying to strike a simple conversation (when it was not busy to make matters even more awkward).

To add more insult to injury, after each encounter I noticed how quick they were to go back to laughing and socializing with their friends making the entire situation even more alienating.

For a place that pride's itself on "inclusion" and "welcoming all walks of life" or whatever their proposed creed is I could not have received the opposite feeling more.

I'm not going to comment on the actual beer as in this day in age there is a brewery or independent beer company on just about every block within the city that offers similar brews. What many of these other places DO offer though is a non-faux attitude on ACTUAL customer inclusion, service, friendliness and a non-pretentious "inner circle" environment that Trace has failed on repeatedly. Many other reviews here...

Man, I used to be a Trace regular, specifically on weekend mornings to work with a cup of coffee. They have great baristas and a ton of seating, and the staff are just really sweet. However, Trace has been hell bent on running events in their space every possible second which makes this impossible. They’ll have yoga that clears out an entire seating area for like 12-15 people, or be streaming Formula 1 races at 9 am with a huge crowd. This would be less of an issue if these events, particularly the projector stuff, were on their site, but they aren’t on the event calendar. I don’t want to have to call a place every time I want to go to there to see if there’s a place to sit or if 40 drunk people will be watching racing before noon on a Sunday. I’ve also found the quality of both the coffee and beer to vary pretty widely, which is difficult considering the price. Sadly I need to find somewhere...

Environment: this is a pretty cool place to chill with friends. Its been updated to the typical industrialized modern micro breweries that you see everywhere. It has a nice outdoor part for when the weather is nice. Inside is airy with a fire pit. The place is lgbt friendly.

Drinks/Food: there really isn't food here. Went on a Monday and there was a food truck outside. I got a vodka lemonade "cocktail", which was just a canned drink poured over ice for $9 (you can buy those cans for $3/each).

There was live music on a Monday night which seemed nice, but it got SO LOUD (Friday night club loud) that we could not hear ourselves or others talk at a tiny 4-top table. I'm a millennial and all about loud music in bars, but this was obscenely loud and with a total of less than 20 people in the bar, it was just obnoxious.

Nice place, but...