The Ranch — Restaurant in Town of Hayward

My wife and her family are visiting the Northwoods as we usually do each year. We had a great experience last year at The Ranch; however, this year was completely different. This year we were met with very unwelcoming hostesses. It started as soon as we walked in the door. When the hostess asked if we had a reservation. We arrived at 5:10 and there were hardly any patrons there. The hostess asked if we would like a booth, and we politely asked for a table. She made a flippant comment, “Let me see if we can make that work.” Please note when we walked in they had 2 people sitting at a four person table when they had a few two person booths so giving us a hard time to start did not sit well. When we ordered our drinks the hostess was just fine until we ordered our food.

Her demeanor went from friendly to cold when she took our order. It was friday fish fry and most people in Wisconsin order that. We ordered, a baked cod meal, two fried cod meals, and a grilled chicken sandwich meal. We did not order steak or anything like that. We waited a long time and witnessed a couple order after us get their food, send back their food and leave. When we finally got our food, my wife asked for some melted butter for her baked cod meal. She was charged an extra $.50. The big takeaway we got was that we did not order the most expensive food so the hostess may have thought she was not going to get a good tip. Here is the thing though, we tip on the experience we get at a restaurant, we don’t tip based on how much we spend. The fact that the experience was so terrible we should have left but we wanted to give them a chance. We live in a consumer market where experience is paramount and if the patron does not have a good experience they will not return. They may not tip the same way I do but if their experience is terrible like mine they will not come back and thus their money is not going to The Ranch it is going somewhere else. Relationships and experience are the name of the game and The Ranch failed...

This is an updated since my last review of the Rance in Hayward, Wisonsin, when I gave it a five star. On July 24th we had reservations for 5pm and were seated 1st, as we waited until 5:15 to actually open. When seated, were told that our server was sick and that we were getting someone else. No problem, right? Well apparently it was. After 5 tables seated after us had gotten their meals, a woman at our table just asked our sever, "could we have our salads?" Not a reasonable request? But a woman who's job is only to hold a clipboard against her chest and occasionally looking at her clipboard, torn into our table and told my cousin that she was being rude. Rude? Asking if we could have our salads? We asked her if she was the manager, which she proudly said, "I'm The HOSTESS." Well, miss hostess, put down your clipboard long enough and help out when you're short staffed. We never got asked for drink orders after the 1st round, which we had to go ourselves to the bar to get waited on. We were reprimanded for just wanting to enjoy a meal with our son who has never been there. Will we be going back to the Ranch, probably not, not unless they get rid of The HOSTESS, that has absolutley no clue how to handle patrons and to help her wait stuff when she apparently has nothing better to do than hold that clipboard over her chest. The food was good and yes, I tipped our server over 20% as she wasn't the problem. To the owner of the Ranch, please ask your Hostess to be a little more friendly and for god sake, learn how to actually talk to your patrons instead of reprimanding for asking a simple question. You're going to lose a lot of your customers because of poor service and...

Went on a Wednesday night at 6pm before it was too busy. 5 adults and one child. Things should run smooth right? I won’t name our waitress by name but she was too overworked and I blame the management for allowing it to happen.

She forgot to bring menus and we asked another waitress to bring them. In the middle of our drink order she had a “buzzer” go off and said there was food ready to be delivered so she left us and came back. Our drink order literally took 30 seconds to take. We ran out of water without our waitress in sight. My wife took the liberty of taking the full carafe off the table next to us who had just departed. My brother had to go to the bar and order our 2nd round of drinks. Again, waitress nowhere to be found asking if we needed anything. In walks the table of three to sit next to us. They had a different waiter and they had appetizers, soup/salad, main course and left before we received our main course. A nice elderly couple on the other side of us I could hear complaining of the exact same problems. The elderly gentleman actually had to get up and ask the waitress where there food was. Food was good. I realize this is a supper club and relaxing and hanging out is part of the experience. Having to serve ourselves shouldn’t be. I can’t imagine what a busy night here would look like. I never leave a 10% tip, but on this experience it was more...