Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Brews — Restaurant in Woodinville

UPDATE: 1/11/2020 After filing an official complaint with corporate, we received some feedback. The first was corporate telling us that they apologize on behalf of the Woodinville RR and offered us a gift card in the amount of our dinner. A couple of days later, I received a call from the RR manager and apologized for how they handled our meal and offered us a complimentary meal to make up for the wrong. We took them up on that offer tonight and while the staff did a better job at ensuring food quality, the service was a bit mediocre (hence why 3/5 stars instead of 4 or 5 - you have to blow me away to get 5-stars). My wife ordered a Guinness and it was "watered down". We asked the waitress to have the bartender check out the spout and keg. A moments later, she came back with a smaller glass of the same Guinness from the same tap. What was that supposed to solve? She ended up asking for a completely different beer and the waitress delivered. Great. While the dinner tab was complimentary, the waitress ended up charging us for the distasteful Guinness and for the replacement beer. On a side note, while I understand it's not the manager's obligation to come out and greet his customers and guests, it would have been nice to meet face-to-face. Why are you hiding behind closed doors?

Older: What a disappointment. Most of the time, I've had pretty good service and quality of food at multiple RR locations, but last night, what my wife and I had was NOT quality food and the service was subpar. I'll talk about the food for a moment. This is exactly what we ordered and how we typically order our food when it contains mayo. We ordered a "guacamole bacon burger" , no mayo, and protein-style (lettuce wrap, no buns), with a side of onion rings. When the burger came out, we got it served on a bun, no guacamole, and no bacon. In addition, we got 4 small onion rings (we thought we were going to 6 pieces) and the hamburger meet tasted like a frozen McDonald patty. Now for the service. The woman who served us, did it with a smile, however lacked the ability to listen to what we ordered. My finally piece of feedback is the table touch screen devices. I understand the intent of trying to push faster service for people and giving them something to be preoccupied with while they dine. The system needs improvement. We sat in the bar and we were ready to order within 5 min of sitting down. I tried to use the device to order our food, but the system didn't allow us to. The "order" button was grayed out and in order for it to be active, the server has to push a "hidden" button to indicate, "now, we're ready to serve you". While this is subjective feedback, my suggestion is this to improve the user experience. That "grayed' out button? Make it always clickable once a customer picks up the device to use it. The system should then send a ping to the server who is responsible for that area to notify them that a customer has entered the restaurant and is ready to order. Not only does this speed up the ordering process, it also allows the server to be aware of their presence and to make themselves available for introductions and to answer any questions they might have. If you want to go one step further, the digital menu should also allow the customer to customize a burger on the system before ordering. This was truly a sad experience at this RR location and I hope that we have consistency across all RR chains in terms of food quality...

Recently I went to Red Robin with my sister, her husband, and their teenager. We were nicely greeted and promptly seated. That is where the night went downhill. Our server was training a new employee. I get it, this has to happen. But that does not explain anything that happened. Our drinks came only filled about 3/4th of the way and the ice was mostly melted. My sister asked for a lemon wedge and Splenda. They tried to say they were out of lemon. Ummm they serve fresh lemonade and have a full bar. The likelihood of this was slim to none. The lemon and the sugar never came. My tea was supposed to have simple syrup in it and didn't. Our food took forever. We had to ask about it when the 2 tables that had ordered after us, had already received their food. We finally got Splenda and lemon after flagging down another server. When they finally brought drink refills, they slammed my sister's down in front of her. She was already struggling with an anxiety/panic attack over what had already been going on and this sent her over the edge and she started crying at the table. They could care less. Oh and we still haven't gotten our food. I had the manager flagged down and he was not friendly at all. Rude actually. He had another server bring our food. It had obviously been sitting in the window the whole time because it was all cold and the tomato and lettuce on the burgers had done that melty wilty thing. We had to request they be sent back and remade. While they were recooking our order, our original waitress checked on us for the 1st time in a good 30 min. She double-checked that 3 of the 4 orders were sent back and verified which ones. My sister had subbed her burger patty for chicken. When we received our replacement orders, my sister’s was wrong. They re-fired the teenager's order and not my sisters. So she got a meat patty and not chicken. They sent this back and started here another meal. By the time she finally got her chicken burger, the rest of us were done eating.

The manager had offered a discount and so I pulled up the bill to see what he had applied. Not only was it a tiny discount but they had double and triple charged us for things. I see a $160 bill for 4 burgers and a couple of sodas. I have to ask the manager again to look into this. I also asked for more than $20 off our bill. I grew up in the industry. If this had happened at any restaurant I have ever been in before or worked at, the manager would have comped the full meal, offered free dessert and probably a gift card. He flat out told me they couldn’t give me a $150 order for free. Um our order was never $150. That was the amount when they triple-charged us. He stated he had already talked to his manager and this was all they were willing to offer. I told him that at this point I would have every right to walk out without paying due to the service and the food and he said oh well and that we wouldn’t be back anyway.

I left still paying $90 and refused to tip. I priced it out and with 4 sodas and 2 small appetizers, the bill should have been around $100 before tax. My family normally loved RR and I get bad days for 1 person but it was like they paired us with every person that was either badly trained or just didn’t want to do their job. I am no Karen. I actually hate sending food back and try to only leave positive reviews. But this time it was too much. There was not a direct positive interaction the...

Red Robins are generally great places to go to, but shortage of staff seems to be going around and this Red Robin, (we chose this one as our regular Bothell locations service has DECLINED drastically in the past 45 days due to management, shortage of staff, and cold food) like most restaurants, seems to be touched as well.

The staff was very kind and helpful and the food was good, but the inadequate staffing did reflect on the quality of the food (it wasn't bad by any means). The garlic fries didn't taste like garlic as they normally would... Just steak fries with a small sprinkling of garlic and $1.50 premium. The "Finest" burgers still tasted great, but the amount of items on the "mad love" burger had clearly been cut back on... Normally it has a thick "Cheddar-and-Parmesan crisp" (as described by their menu) but it was cut so thin it was nearly transparent and added no flavor to the burger as it should have. As for my Arnold Palmer (non-sweetened Iced Tea with Lemonade) it tasted more like water than either lemonade or tea... either the syrups they mix with the water were low (or dialed down) or a lot of water was added to the normal ingredients.

The staff on duty WAS doing the best they could and I cannot fault them when they are having to do the job of 2 or 3 people. It does come out in the service indirectly, though... Both my wife's and my drinks needed a refill before we were halfway through our stay, and but we were never offered refills on our drinks or "bottomless fries", although it was clear they were empty. We eventually took care of the drinks by refilling them using the electronic "refill drinks" menu. By the time we had the opportunity to ask for more fries, it was nearly time to leave, and I didn't want steak fries with a splash of garlic so I didn't reach out to ask for more (although I would have ordered them had we been asked at anytime).

I don't want to appear to be picking on Red Robin or their staff in any way, because I'm not. They are kind and have great food, but the experience has really suffered. Partly through no fault of their own, but if they aren't able to provide full service then they need to limit the menu, the amount of people they serve, or find a different way to balance this out. I'm happy to eat at a 3 star Red Robin IF their price reflected it, but I'd rather pay full price and give a 5 star score...