J. I. Baldwin and Son Barbecue — Restaurant in Springfield

My family and I have never had issue with the food here, in fact we love it. This review is based on poor customer service. I rolled up tonight at 6:30pm(they close at 7), initially went through the drive thru. It has just began porting rain, I waited at the drive thru window for a few seconds, and the guy at the window did not acknowledge me. I thought maybe he's waiting a second because it was literally pouring rain. So my thought was I'll pull around to a parking spot and come inside to order to make it easier on myself and the employees at window. I get out of my vehicle in the pouring rain with my young daughter only to make it to the door and the door is locked. All while I see 3 employees inside whom I know saw me, yet didn't acknowledge me. I'm like okay thats fine, the inside is closed(not unusual in a pandemic). The rain is slowing down, so I proceed to the drive through again(all way before 7pm) and they have just put a sign on the window that says closed?. Whereas a minute ago that was not the case( and it's not 7pm yet?). Well the people inside again do not acknowledge my presence, even though I am fully aware they have seen me for the last few minutes. I would have not had been so upset by this situation, if someone were kind enough to just acknowledge me and says hey sorry ma'am we had to close early this evening or something, anything!! It was...

The local paper ran an ad stating that they were selling a Family Pack of barbeque for $12.99. So, after work I decided to get the family pack for supper. I waited 20 minutes in the drive thru and when I got to the window and the employee asked me what I wanted, I said “I’ll take the $12.99 family pack “. The employee said “yeah, did you see that in the newspaper?” I said yes and he responded “oh, that was a misprint. That was from like a month ago.” I asked him since it was printed in the paper would they not honor it? He said “ no, you’ll have to pay regular price, $17.99, is that ok?” I said “no it’s not” and I drove off. This is VERY BAD BUSINESS and I will not be patronizing their restaurant again. Others that I have spoken to felt the same as I do. Even if it was a mistake, that’s in them and they should have honored it. It’s not like they can’t afford...

If you have a Whitt's nearby, I'd recommend eating there. My first visit to Baldwin's wasn't great, and came after having some of their food at a party. Everything I've tried (pulled pork, potatoe salad, potatoe wedges) has been like a not-quite-as-good version of whitt's, or "whitt's on a bad day". And I'm not exactly crazy about whitt's (but it scratches an itch). In addition, the service was terrible. I'm not sure what the hold up was, but it took 20 minutes for our order to be completed. We were inside, watching them work. The food didn't need to be made, just scooped and served. A line began to gather behind us due to the ridiculous amount of time this was taking. They eventually started serving people behind us, though our order wasn't extraordinarily large or complicated. Once again, choose Whitt's first. Jack's if it's...