Santa Fe Mexican Grill - Wilmington — Restaurant in Wilmington

Very good food for the money but the service is extraordinarily poor.

I live in the building above Santa Fe and after a very difficult week at work and being away from family, I decided taking an elevator ride down to eat at Santa Fe would be a good life decision. I walked in and was asked by the hostess “is there something you need“. I stated that I would like to be seated for dinner. I was then asked by the hostess “did you set a reservation?”[Viewing the restaurant, there were many open tables and the bar was basically empty.] I stated that I had not made a reservation. The hostess told me to wait and she would get back to me but did not specify any details. The hostess then went back to her conversation with friends(?) who were hanging around the host station.

I ended up sitting at the bar and waited 10 minutes to be served a beer. I waited another 10-ish minutes to be asked if I would like to order food off the menu. The general manager, Mike, delivered my food to me at which point I notified him of the aforementioned concerns. Mike was extremely apologetic and realized I had not even been given a place setting for the meal he was delivering.

My issue is this, I am a human and deserve to be treated as anyone else. I did arrive at the restaurant in khaki shorts, a T-shirt, unshaven, and utterly ground down from work. However, should I be expected to show up in tux for a $15-$20 meal? Furthermore, should I be lectured on whether I set a reservation and be ignored because I did not when there are 15-ish open tables and a nearly empty bar?

As it turns out I’m part of a small group of leaders that is launching a new site for a fortune 50 company that will employ 4500 people in the area over the next 18 months. Should I bring my résumé next time for better service? Should I bring my transcripts and two masters degrees along with me as proof that I am fit to be treated like a human in a restaurant where I am paying for service?

Dear Santa Fe, please understand I am here (and should be expected) to be kind to your staff and not overly demanding with expectations; however, it is my expectation that I am paying for somebody else to take the burden of dinner preparation and cleaning off my plate in exchange for remuneration. Furthermore, I will treat your staff better than any other patrons will. But, I will address unkind and unattentive service fiercely and respectfully.

I’m 850 miles away from my entire family on this Fourth of July, the day of the event and post. Also, I am working on a career capstone project and just wanted a couple beers, a good meal, and a friendly face. Normally, two out of three isn’t bad but in this instance the service provided by your hostess and one of your bar tenders was a complete dealbreaker.

I will say the primary bartender that took care of me and was very outstanding and I thanked her with words of affirmation and a much larger than normal tip.

I hope your staff understands that they never know who it is they are serving. And more importantly, they understand they are always serving a human of equal worth and value who is deserving of respect regardless of appearance. Good news, I did shower and brush my teeth prior to dinner.

And to add, we all (every person in society) is always serving somebody that is remarkably special and of equal value,...

We have been to both the Wilmington location and the Newark location many times. The food and drinks are always great, but the service at the Wilmington location has gotten to the point where we'll actually drive the extra 20 minutes to go to Newark most of the time.

Most recently, my wife and I stopped in for dinner at 6:45 on a Monday night. The place wasn't very busy and they sat us right away. Nobody even came to our table until 7 o'clock. At that point we ordered drinks and asked for waters, along with the free chips and salsa. Waters came at 7:10. Chips and salsa came at 7:15. At 7:25, I politely stopped someone (I believe the manager) walking past our table and asked if someone could perhaps check on our drinks because we had been here 40 minutes and don't even have drinks yet. He said "Oh I'll check on those, but we only have 1 bartender working tonight so he's pretty backed up." The problem with that is we had seen the bartender finish making our drinks and set them on the bar at least 10 minutes earlier. Sure enough, the manager brought our drinks right over, but again said "Sorry about that, we just have the 1 bartender and he's doing his best."

This entire time, there was a family of 4 seated at the table right next to us and we could tell they were getting frustrated because nobody had even come to their table yet. After at least 15 minutes, the woman stood up and walked over to another waitress and asked her "Do you know if we have a server?" She said she would check on that and take care of it. The same server from our table strolled over to their table 5 minutes later.

Not only is the service extremely slow, but instead of apologizing and trying to make it right, the manager simply makes excuses like "We only have 1 bartender tonight," which not only made me feel guilty for checking on drinks that we had ordere 20 minutes ago and that we saw sitting on the bar for 10 minutes -- but it's also not something you should be telling your customer. Taking 40 minutes literally just to get one drink should be completely unacceptable to the manager, regardless of the reasoning, and he should be extremely apologetic, not making me feel bad for checking on the status of our order.

Go to the Newark location -- you'll never have a bad...

I always try to write a review of my experience, so the establishment understands where they are missing the mark. With this said, my food was excellent, and my server did a nice job. However, this is where we went wrong. At 4:30 PM on Cinco De Mayo, I was sitting outside on the patio with one other table / one guest, all other tables were empty. The first thing the hostess said to me after greeting me was, “I just want to let you know we have a 2-hour limit in our restaurant”. Ok. After the pandemic, most restaurants are begging guest to come and stay and spend money, not here. Not only did I find this to be a big turn off, the average dining experience in America for a party of two is 1:45 with perfect service and no issues. However, my plan was to meet 4 friends for dinner and drinks to celebrate Cinco De Mayo. I brought this concern to the restaurant manager who seemed too careless of this concern. So, here is the outcome after a brief 55 min stay and tab of $34 dollars and a $7 tip for my server my friends and I went down the street to The Brandywine Brewing Company BBC, where we enjoyed a 3:45 min stay. The outcome was tab of just over $500 in food and drinks and a $110 tip for the server, this equated to 1,600% increase in food sales and Tip for the server! I hope this information is useful and all though the owner seems to graciously thank their customers for a 4- or 5-star review on google, there seems to be limited response to 1,2,3 star reviews! Negative reviews succeed in chasing away customers from your business to your competitors. Research shows that one negative review drives away 22% of prospects, around 30 customers. The percentage of lost customers increases with an increase in negative reviews. Three negative reviews drive away customers by 59.2%. While positive restaurant reviews bring customers in, bad restaurant reviews keep customers away. According to Harvard Business School, a one-star increase in a restaurant's Yelp rating can generate an extra 9% in revenue. I hope you find this helpful in providing a better customer experience...