The Cider Press — Restaurant in West Virginia

The first time I visited Cider Press I was in town from college for the weekend. I loved it! I became a huge ambassador for this place! The food was good, the in-state beer selection was awesome & I really enjoyed visiting the market attached!

However... this past weekend, my wife and I moved back to the Eastern Panhandle from Virginia, so the two of us still have Virginia ID's. I was so excited to bring her to Cider Press as we both love supporting local businesses, especially those that offer the fresh ingredients you'll find at Cider Press! It was on the top of our list for a date night option.

I was really looking forward to having the Devil Anse IPA that I had last time, but upon giving our ID's over to the waitress (who I might add greeted us by telling us how stressed she was) we were told that we couldn't be served. Her words were "haha... well, you're not even 21... and our manager just doesn't like the look of yours (referring to my wife)"

After pointing out to our waitress where our ID's clearly show both my wife and I are well over 21 years old, we asked to speak to a manager.

We practically begged the manager to call the authorities if he thought we were trying to pull one over on him, and he told us he would rather not have our service than accept an ID he wasn't comfortable with. When he asked where the issued date on the ID was, we pointed it out. When he asked where expiration date is on the ID's were, we showed him! He finally said "Well I lived in Virginia for 10 years and this don't look like the one's I've seen."

We left very frustrated because this is a place we wanted to become regulars at. I suggest the staff there learn what a Virginia Drivers License looks like seeing as they are an 8 minute drive from the state line.

I guess if you have a WV license then I highly encourage you to try the food, but then again it didn't matter how legitimate our ID was they might "just not like the way...

My wife and I want to really like this place. We really do. The food is good and in the three or four times we've been there, we've never had a bad meal...

But...

Every time we've gone, the service has continually gotten slower, and worse. I don't know whether it's a staffing issue, a kitchen speed issue, or what, but yesterday, 3/17/18, we decided to try their breakfast specials (first time)..

We arrived at 10:15, the server said it would be about 5 minutes. She came back at about 10:30 to seat us. We thought maybe they were just very busy, but when walking to our booth, we noticed no less than 5 empty tables...

15 minutes later -- after prodding another server -- our waitress showed up and announced that "no one told me you were here"... She asked what we wanted to drink, took our order, and disappeared for another 5 minutes. We're now at 10:50am...

We were thinking about just leaving, but at that precise moment, we decided to go ahead and order, because we do generally like their food and really wanted to give their breakfast a try... She tells us that "the kitchen's a little backed up and it'll be a few minutes"... We look around at the now 8 empty tables and figure that can't be but "a few minutes"...

30 minutes later, our food arrives, so at this point, we're 1 hour, 10 minutes in and have just gotten our food...

If it were the first time, I'd say "maybe they got an unexpected busload of kids or something" but as I said, the service has simply gotten continually worse with each visit... In the end, I just think it's a failure of management. Either in staffing, training their wait staff (who was nice enough, just not expedient), or...???

As I said, we love home-owned restaurants, and want desperately to support Cider Press (because they usually have good food). We sincerely wish them luck, but this is probably strike 3...

My family and I ate at this establishment today and let me tell you, if you have children under the age of 2 I do not recommend eating here. Advertising as a family friendly restaurant, I attended a late lunch with my parents, my three children, with my sister and her 1 year old son. My nephew is unable to talk and when he gets excited he can be loud - then again, what happy 1 year old isn’t loud when they express excitement? Several times the family next to us smiled and laughed when he would get excited and they said that they have children also and they understand. Shortly after, the manager on duty came over to our table and asked us if everything was fine and then proceeded to say “well he’s getting a little loud” then she walked away. While my sister didn’t take offense to that interaction, the poor facial gesture and the comment from another server as she was telling my nephew to calm down was absolutely out of line. The server looked at my sister and told her to “control your child”. My sister then proceeded to ask her if she had kids and she got up and left. She was very angry and has never been treated in such a manager. In fact, the father of her son is a general manager of a corporate restaurant and we all agreed that this was poor interaction with the customer when they are “so welcoming of kids”. Her boyfriend then called the restaurant and asked if there was any formal complaint by any customers about their child and the noise level and they told him no.

So please, if you want to enjoy your meal and have your children be children, this is not the place to eat! Terribly disappointed in how we were treated today. We have always enjoyed eating here, but this will be the last...