Clara's Pizza King — Restaurant in Richmond

Clara's is a family favorite. Let me first say that we received TOP NOTCH table service, from Katie, who is one of the funniest, most patient and highly efficient servers ever. She is an absolute gem. 4 stars for her and the food! Now here's why it's not 5 stars: This visit included a group of 17 people, in town for a funeral. We attempted to make a reservation, since our group was large, and were told they didn't accept reservations on Friday and Saturday. Instead, when we were ready to head over, we called ahead to say a group of 15-19 was inbound (2 never showed). When we arrived, another group that didn't call had showed up ahead of us and were seated in the tables that had been prepared due to our phone call. The hostess was rather rude and indifferent about the issue, and said that she could only prepare tables for us if our whole party was present. Seriously? This isn't fine dining- it's a casual, regional pizza chain. It wasn't crowded, and we were about to drop serious money there. I know this, because I paid the bill! After a wait of 20 or so minutes AFTER all of our people arrived, we were led through a fairly empty restaurant to our tables. While waiting, we seriously discussed taking our whole party to a different Pizza King facility, but a little recon determined the others really were crowded, so waiting with the rude hostess was still our best bet.

Suggestions: take the darn reservation, and seat the 15 people who are there and ready to order. Be flexible about the ability to add 2-4 people in your nearly-empty restaurant. Teach your host staff to be nice to your customers, rather than snippy and rude.

They seriously underestimated their level of busyness, and nearly lost out on a $300 party due to this inflexibility and the off-putting rudeness of the hostess. If it weren't for the logistics of taking 15+ people elsewhere, we would have left and gotten our Royal Feast in one of the other PK locations...

This review is more for management, Bobbie specifically. Her customer service is beyond phenomenal. I ordered a pizza and some breadsticks for a quick dinner for the family after a tiring day. I get there to pick up my order and my card declined repeatedly. Their computer system wasn’t working due to storms I believe. The other customers were becoming irate due to longer than promised wait times. Bobbie was apologizing to everyone and trying to explain the situation and was even going as far as giving everyone a discount for their inconvenience. Here i am, still standing off to the side as she continued repeatedly to get my card to work as I did not have cash with me. Finally, after several more frustrated customers expressed their frustration, she just looked at me and said just take the pizza and have a good night. I said I can run to the ATM but she declined and insisted I take it. I thanked her and told her I would come back with money. Unfortunately I didn’t come back, at least for another week.

Fast forward to earlier today, I came in with a $50 bill in hand to cover the $38 order from last week. You know what she did? She still refused to take it. Instead she thanked me for my time as a first responder and insisted I let someone do something nice for me for once. Such a small gesture went such a long way.

This isn’t the first time she’s helped me out either and I’m sure there are plenty of others that can attest to this about Bobbie. I can also guarantee that I wasn’t the first she’s ever helped and I know I will not be the last.

I hope her upper management recognizes her abilities, her knowledge, and her compassion and ensures that she is treated as well as she treats all of...

We showed up with 12 people, thinking we had made a reservation, but unfortunately one person thought the other made it.. they thought the other made it... and we thought we may not be able to get seating, as we saw at least 2 other large parties inside dining already. After waiting a few minutes for the last people to show up, the server Tralaina came up to greet us and ask how many we had in our party. Within 5 minutes she had tables pulled together and came back to show us to our seats. She was able to fit us in, when she also had another party of about 15 people in her section. She made it so we all had plenty of space and could be loud and fun without bothering anyone, because the party near us was doing the same thing. We had everything we needed, when we needed it, there was one small mistake with mushrooms but that was very quickly replaced with a mushroom free pizza at no charge. Not once did we feel like Tralaina was overwhelmed or irritated at having so many guests all at once. She was friendly, energetic, prompt, and paid attention to all the little details of who wanted what done to their food/drinks. And the very best part of it all: when we were leaving she let us get together in and in front of the bus so we could get some very cute family pics where she was our impromptu photographer! Coming in we weren't even sure we would be able to have dinner with our visiting family that night, coming out we were laughing and had had a wonderful time thanks to Tralaina. Clara's, I'd hang onto her, she is an absolute asset to your...