Steakhouse hits back at customer who ‘berated manager until point of tears’ with impassioned TripAdvisor response

A popular Bristol restaurant has hit back at a damning review on TripAdvisor, while appealing to the general public to be slightly more forgiving during the pandemic.

And having written the response in such an eloquent manner, you can’t help but to agree that a little lenience may not go amiss when it comes to Bristol’s resilient and hardworking hospitality scene. After all, it’s been a tricky few years for the industry and, at times, it would be fair to say the customer is not always right.

Perhaps highlighting that there is a new-found bravery since Covid-19 for restaurants to stand up for themselves and to call-out unfair behaviour from customers, Mugshot Restaurant on St Nicholas Street in the city centre has opted for an ‘honesty is the best policy’ approach to responding to reviews.

Despite the premise being that the customer is always right in hospitality, the way in which the general manager at Mugshot has responded to one particularly negative review suggests that, at times, it’s best to calmly reply to critics.

In doing so on this particular occasion, they’ve highlighted the problems and complications that hospitality staff face on a daily basis - something that is perhaps enlightening to many.

Mugshot has built up a strong reputation as a specialist steak restaurant, whereby they cook them on the centre of the tables. Although known primarily for this, they also serve up homemade pizzas, too, and run a daily specials board for other dishes.

However, in the last fortnight, their TripAdvisor credentials have been dropping due to a particularly long and wordy complaint. Despite this, the restaurant is still ranked by TripAdvisor as number 17 of 1162 restaurants in Bristol, and their 844 ‘excellent’ reviews far exceed the 15 ‘terrible’ reviews on the site.

In this particular review, the party in question arrived for their booked table at 10:30pm to find that the restaurant didn’t have any pizzas left on the menu. The reviewer wrote: “The waitress came over to take our order. Hi, can we have two steaks and these two pizzas please.

“Oh sorry I don’t think we have any pizza at all. WHAT? 50% of the menu gone! So the pizza contingent of the party would have to go without food? Remember, we booked this table at an agreed time, we were not walk-ins. Secured with a credit card reservation.

“Why did the restaurant not keep four balls of pizza dough in the fridge to service our choices? I can understand running out of a particular steak but the basic ingredient for pizza, not so much. So what do you do now? 50% of the party can’t eat, it’s 10:30 at night and most restaurants have stopped serving.”

In a bizarre turn of events, the customers even asked at one point if the restaurant could order them in some pizza from elsewhere, to which they seemed surprised to hear the answer was an ‘absolutely no’.

The reviewer went on to claim that, when they said they were leaving without paying, an aggressive manner took over. They finished by saying: “​​For a company in the service industry just out of a pandemic that should be doing all it can to keep its customers, it was Unbelievably poor. So instead of taking a couple of hundred quid from our group it cost them two pints, a bottle of wine and a bad review.”

It is this that seemingly made the assistant manager of Mugshot, Ria Alexander, reply: “Having stated that a business just out of a pandemic should be doing all it can to keep its customers, should customers not also not be doing all they can to support their independent business by being a little more empathetic in a troubled situation?

“You seemed very quick to not want to pay for the drinks and order in food from a huge franchise, nothing benefitting any independent venue really.”

And in an interesting and enlightening response to the issue of having no pizza, they responded: “We are primarily a steakhouse that does offer a few other dishes and have never claimed to be anything else.

“If we were to serve 130 people a day, under your logic we would have 130 doughs on standby in case every table wanted pizza, but also 130 of every steak in case they wanted that. No business does that. It’s an incredibly flawed logic that would lead to the inevitable bankruptcy of said business.”

Ms Alexander finished by telling them they neglected “to mention the fact that even though I tried to help come up with solutions, you felt the need to keep berating me until I reached the point of tears.

“We do understand your disappointment but two members of your party were extremely and unnecessarily aggressive. In my 22 years of hospitality I have never been spoken to like that while trying to help someone.”

Speaking to BristolWorld on her response, Ms Alexander added: “We were expecting the review because, occasionally, you do get tables like this.

“People often don’t get that big chains have huge infrastructure around stock and supplies while independents don’t have that luxury, especially when they’re already trying to source stock from other independents.

“The response took me two days to draft and is a collaborative effort as it features tidbits from other staff who feel the same way about the review.

“It’s been a rough ride for everyone in hospitality and the industry is hard as it is. We love it, don’t get me wrong - it’s not something you can fake, and having people back in the restaurant on the whole has been a huge pleasure.

“But a bit of compassion and understanding after the pandemic goes a long way. Please don’t be mean, it’s much easier to be nice.”