Giovanni's Pizza — Restaurant in Richlands

My family and I went to weeks ago on a Friday evening for dinner. We called before we went inside to see what time they closed. The girl on the phone said they close at 10 pm. It was 8:50 when we went inside. We already knew we wanted pizza and fries while we waited on our pizza. Anyway, when we walked inside, one of the girls in the dining area said to the people in the kitchen, "Well ya'll, it looks like we will be here until 10." I looked at the other girl in the dining area and asked her if they were closing. She replied, " No, you are fine." We sat down, and supposedly, the waitress took our drink order. We were looking over the menu at the pizza. We decided to order the two 16" one topping pizza special. We ordered one pepperoni and one sausage. My husband asked our server if she would please ask them not to burn our pizza As soon as she brought them out, they were burnt. The other girl came to the table and asked us if they were too brown. I told her, "Yes, but we will keep them in order to keep you from tossing them out and wasting. So, we started eating the pepperoni, which was very overcooked. I reached for a slice of the sausage and took a bite. I noticed a black hair near the crust end. Thank God I noticed it. We did tell our server, and she offered to remake the sausage pizza. I, for certain, let her. The kitchen packed it up in a box, and she gave us a free cinnamon stick for our trouble. Plus, she gave us 10% off of our bill. We were the only table with patrons sitting inside eating. We had to go to the counter and ask for refills. Neither of the girls came to our table with drink refills. We still left her a monetary tip. We try to be great customers. We gather items and help clean the table up to where they don't have to touch used napkins. This last experience was enough to make us very discouraged to patronize this establishment again. That's sad because I loved the food when the new owner took it over.

The problem lies within the kitchen with staff overcooking food and not caring.

The second problem is burning food and still serving it to people.

Thirdly, the problem is an empty restaurant and inattentive waitresses. The owner really needs to clean house or work in the evening hours to see what's going on. These things I listed ruin a restaurant very quickly when it's repetitive.

P.S. To add: I don't know if our sausage pizza was deliberately sabotaged due to having to cook another one or what, but it was so extremely hot, like red peppercorns had been put on it under the cheese. The spicy heat blistered my mouth.

P.S.S. Never Again Will I Accept Food Like This. If This Happens Again, If And When We Decide To Eat There, I Will Not Accept The Food.

Do...

Giovannis is a restaurant staple to the Town of Richlands, Va. A restaurant that has withstood the changing times, and has progressively stayed open and on top of the ever so changing logistics when it comes to any franchised restaurant.

During our visit to giovannis pizza we held the restaurant to the same critiqument that any other restaurant is to be held, while measuring differences or changes that had been seen since the last time we had ate at this location.

Giovannis has continued its reputation of great food, where everything received was hot and tasty. Our salads were fresh, and made to order. However, customer service and proper service was lacking as the beginning stages of receiving our drinks and salads were roughly 20 minutes after ordering. Noting that during our dining experience, dining room attendance was low with only two groups of other dining guests within the restaurant.

I do not believe the concern was due to the waitress, but rather the logistics of the restaurant. Past years of visiting and reviewing Giovannis, staffing never changed and appears to still be a bare bones work crew. Add staffing issues on top of door dash orders, where door dash orders or over the phone orders were or appeared to be retained as the top priority. Dine in customers want fast paced, attentive workers. Although this may be a changing factor in todays restaurant expectations. Most restaurants ensure staffing is up to the extra workload of taking on these additional responsibilities. Giovannis needs to look at bringing on additional assistance by looking at the new logistics of rising food restaurants, while deciding what tier of restaurant it wishes to be. If not there may be future troubles ahead.

Regardless, a future visit will be in store to see what changes, and what additions have been added to take care of...

Rusty Hess who now owns giovannis is one of the most rude people I've ever seen in my life! He has no customer service morals at all! I will NOT ever get food here again! Learn to speak respectfully and maybe you wouldn't lose all your workers and customers. You do not deserve my money or my time. I'm just writing this review because I want to save other people from being talked to so rudely. You will be lucky if giovannis doesn't shut down because of how you treat people. Most disrespectful person I've ever met. I honestly thought about asking for my money back. You're lucky I didn't want your workers making the food for nothing because they wasn't rude to me. If I could give zero stars I would! On top of this I asked for no peppers or onions and a bunch of ranch. They gave me French dressing NOT ranch! It's full of peppers and onions so now I can't even eat it! That's ok karma will get them. I know they did it on purpose which is ridiculous! Its sad you can't go to a restaurant and get what you asked for even! I don't know how else to warn all of you but DO NOT GO...