The Bar West — Restaurant in Shawnee

Nice hole in the wall atmosphere but clean! Bartender's are very friendly and drinks are reasonably priced. Friendly customers, great atmosphere and for not being local's we felt right at home here. Overall, we had a great time here. After seeing the reviews on this place I can only say this we came here.

When I was younger my dad turned me into a Clint Eastwood fan early in my childhood and one of my favorites is out of his ‘Spaghetti Western‘ series – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (are you whistling the tune in your head yet?). And I think this title applies to how you classify comments and respond to them.

The Good – Obviously, these are great to receive and can make your day, week or month as a business owner. There is a great sense of pride when you see your hard work turn into 5 Star reviews and positive comments. However, your work doesn’t stop with a positive review. It is important to say thanks for the review and encourage additional comments and feedback if possible. If someone takes the time to write a positive review about your company, make sure to take the time to connect with them and make sure they come back and know they are appreciated.

The Bad – Now these are not so great to see and can ruin your day, week or month and can be a bitter pill to swallow. More than likely, you work very hard in your business, care deeply about it and your customers and when something goes wrong for whatever reason, it can be very painful to read.

However, I think this is where you have the greatest opportunity as an owner. You handle this the same way as you do The Good – you thank them for their review, ask for additional comments or feedback and then address the comment/review in the best way possible to resolve the issue. That may be as simple as an explanation, an apology, a request to give your business another chance or any other number of ways to handle a disgruntled customer, but you do whatever you can to take care of the problem.

How is this an opportunity for your business? As business owners, we have all been told that a happy customer only tells one person but an unhappy customer will tell 10. The challenge for the business owner before social media was that if you fixed the problem for the unhappy customer, the only people who knew about it were you and the customer. But now, you can solve that problem and show that you care about your customers in front of hundreds or thousands! AWESOME!

As a consumer, I know that no business is perfect and although it is great to see all positive reviews on a business profile, if they are all too perfect, don’t you get a little skeptical about the business? I know I do. But if I see a negative review and that the business owner went out of their way to take care of the customer, that means A LOT TO ME and is an organization I will visit because I know they care. You have a great opportunity to create new brand evangelists and loyal customers. JACKPOT!

The Ugly – It’s a very sad fact, but there are mean people out there that have nothing better to do than be mean. For these types of comments, you have to just LEAVE THEM ALONE! Don’t respond, don’t argue, don’t bother. That is what they want you to do and I promise it will get uglier if you do. Also make sure your staff knows this policy so they don’t accidentally step into the trap. Although it is by no means fun to see those mean comments on your profile, they will go away. We all know someone like that and that they are best left ignored. People who visit your business profile know the...

For the most part this bar is a great place, good food, drinks, and good patrons. I will warn you that the owner is a bit of weirdo. Halloween of 2010, I was there with a friend of mine. The owner, Jake, I believe his name is, was so intoxicate he was harassing customers whom were just quietly minding their own business. It all started when a friend of his (maybe his brother) tried to make him leave because he was so drunk. After maybe an hour or so of him trying to get him in the car, the owner came back in, and started to mess with my friend. He took his costume and ran off with it. He then came back with it, and sat next to him, whispering very disturbing things in to his ear of a sexually harassing nature, propositioning him to do sexual things with him. He then began to drink my friend's beer, taking it behind the bar. When my friend nicely asked for it back, Jake threw a beer bottle at him, missing his head by maybe a foot at most. At this point I thought my friend might tear him in half, and he likely would have, but I quickly called the police. After interviewing us they forced the owner to go home and to shut the bar down for the night. The guy has some real issues. I know for a fact he has lied to the staff that was not there at the time, their story about what happened was very different. I was not intoxicated and remember the night very well, the shawnee PD breathalyzed me and I blew a .02. You can believe this story, or you can choose not to, but it is absolutely true, apparently even the shawnee pd agreed. I am sure if you hang out there enough you can ask around and meet someone who was there that...

Decent but had some issues....went here after some Sunday softball games with the family, always looking for another good restaurant that is not a chain. First, they have a decent appetizer menu especially for Sunday! So I was excited. We ordered mushrooms, fried pickles, potato skins, sliders and beef nachos and a chef salad. The waitress said that the nachos were big enough for two. I think she meant that if you have more than two people order more! Table service was decent but very slow, we ran out of drinks several times and the restaurant was not that busy. Food took like 30+ min to get served so with a starved crew after games this didn’t help.

Food was good, except the sliders were burned when we received them, they did apologize and replaced them, replacement was still charred too much although definitely better. I know sliders are difficult to grill since they are smaller and burn easier. I happen to like juicy med-med well burgers. Nachos were very good, but so small that we should have ordered 3 of them for my crew of five. They charged us extra for bringing out another set of chips for us to finish the plate. In all, tasty food, a little surprised at the portions on most of the appetizers, very small! could be that they were smaller due to happy hour or something like that. Normally in my experience, small pubs serve the same size appetizers during Happy Hour as they do normally, so this was a disappointment. Not sure if I would return, definitely won’t order the appetizers again especially for a hungry crew! Other than and the sliders...