Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Saint Petersburg

On Saturday 8/12. My family from out of town and my family went to the Longhorn Steakhouse. My nephew who has autism had been in the pool all day saying Longhorn Steakhouse or Outback. We arrived at Longhorn Steakhouse at 9:45pm on Tyrone Blvd N in St. Pete said they will have to ask the manager as it was a party of 14. The host never told me why she had to ask the manager. The manager then come up and said it will be a hour and a half to two hour wait and we close at 11. I then said so you are telling me without telling me you can't serve us. He didn't say anything. I then called Outback on 4th St N. Asked if they could serve us. They said let me ask my manager. The manager come to the phone and asked how far we were. I told him on the GPS it says we were 15 minutes away. He said ok I can get yall in. Meanwhile the manager of Longhorn come out said I can sit 2 tables of 7. I said no thank you. You didn't want to help when I checked in we are headed to Outback. We walked into Outback where we were greeted and told let me make sure everything is ready for you. The manager of the restaurant named Bryce greeted us and took us to our seats. Will was our server. He was on top of everything. They also closed at 11pm. We left at 11:30pm. Never once did Bryce come over to rush us out of the restaurant. He did come over to make sure that we were taken care of and we were happy. Will our server never once rushed us to get out at closing time. He kept doing his job. Checking to make sure we were OK, had everything we needed. My family and I are thankful for Bryce and Will for taking care of a big party, late at night not rushing us and let my family spend quality time together before my brother and his family went back home out of state. Made us feel welcomed at the restaurant and not rushed. We were very pleased with the service we got at Outback. Do not like how we were treated at Longhorn Steakhouse at all. A BIG THANK YOU to Bryce and Will for helping us and being so nice and welcomed us although it was...

I love Outback Steakhouse food. Unfortunately this location cannot get service together. I always order on Uber eats and the food is always wrong. So I decided to order carry out and pick it up myself to ensure that the order was correct. Thank goodness I did. Arrived and my order was missing the following. Bacon and ranch which was an up charge for my fries. All toppings from my salad that made it anything outside of a side salad were missing.(I ordered a steakhouse salad). Dressing was wrong. Then they re heated my MR steak to about MW well while I waited for them to correct my other food. A side of Mac and cheese was missing. And none of the sauces were in the bag. When I came inside there was a group of people all waiting for their carry out orders. One lady looking throught the bags and advised a gentleman "you just gotta take initiative around here or no one will ever help". I walked up to the manager to ask for help and was greeted about as friendly as walking into a cult. Customer service seemed to be a major inconvenience for her. She went into the kitchen where the carry out guy had been working on fixing my order and came back with the rest of the food. She handed me the bag and said nothing. Not "I'm sorry for the inconvenience" "thank you for waiting 20 minutes past your pick up time" "thank you for checking every container of food before you pulled off" "let me offer you a coupon for next time". Nothing.

From what I can tell based on my repeated experience, the murmurs of the uber eats employees, and your other patrons....you guys have an issue. I'm sure you are looking for a way to enhance your customer experience, reduce waste, increase employee morale, reduce employee turnover. All that starts at the top. I'd start with training management (specifically the woman I met today) how to support their employees and how to engage with customers. Very basics of...

BEWARE.. Please read your check before you pay!!! We were at Outback on 4th in St Pete. All was fine until we told server to use our $10 dine rewards. Server brought our check back with only $5 off. I told him I had $10 available to use. He argued with me that I'm only allowed to use one $5 reward at a time.. what? I've had rewards for years and that's just not so. He said he'd go to manager and see if it can be done. He came back and said yes, sorry, yes I could use all $10. So, after that we looked at total of check and it was crazy high for what we had. I showed him he charged us full drink prices for refills (coke and teas only). He said, they do charge for refills.. .. What? Are you joking?.. he insisted they do. But.. just under $25 for our 3 drinks!. So we asked to see the manager. When she came over she apologized, said our server hit the wrong button and that they NEVER charge for refills and fixed our check. When we were leaving we talked to manager again and I said that maybe he's new but please make sure he's not charging others for refills and that people can use rewards. She said he's been working there for a while and knows all these things. When I told her how he argued with us about the charges and he insisted they were not a mistake, she was surprised. She said she did not know he argued about the charges and would speak with him, I hope she did. If our check is higher, he gets a bigger tip and since he did know what he was doing on both issues and was not a new employee, we figured he wanted the bigger tip. How many times has he done this before to customers? How many don't really look at all the charges? If he did it this time there's no doubt in my mind he's done it before. I hope the manager really looks into his charges to other customers as well .....