Customer Service at the Yardhouse
Yesterday Ali and I spent the day basically doing not much of anything. We slept in, had a lazy breakfast and then did some furniture shopping. We landed up in Kensington, a nice area of Calgary which is just on the north side of the Bow River. While driving around, we had been listening to the Team Canada women’s gold medal hockey game on CBC Radio and since we were both hungry, decided to grab a bite to eat. The original destination was far too packed so we decided to hit the Yardhouse, and as an added bonus we’d be able to catch the last period of the hockey game on the pub’s TVs.
The Yardhouse in Kensington is the second Yardhouse to open up. The first Yardhouse opened shortly before the Calgary Flames’ run for the Stanley Cup in 2004 on 17th Avenue, which most people know as ‘the Red Mile’. The Yardhouse pub can attribute most of it’s success to the Flames, given that 17th Avenue is a little bit like radio; there are a few stronghold locations and everywhere else tends to have a high turnover as pubs try to reinvent themselves and mimic the popular locations (such as Melrose and The Ship & Anchor).
The Yardhouse in Kensington opened up late last year in what I believe used to be a Bass Brothers location. In any case, the space is nice, in a good location and full of TVs. The service on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. When we came in, the pub wasn’t all that busy, with perhaps 15 people there, all of whom were watching the Team Canada women’s gold medal hockey game. Immediately after the win (yay, Canada!), the sole bartender there switched the sound off the game and onto what he referred to as ‘classic rock’ (personally, I don’t consider Ossy Osbourse classic rock but whatever).
Since the medal ceremony was coming up immediately, Ali asked the bartender nicely if he wouldn’t mind switching the sound back to the game. It was at this point that the rudeness began. Long story short, the bartender was rude, condescending and everything that customer service shouldn’t be. Did he have a bad day? Possibly. But does that matter, especially to us? Nope. And while most people might be offended, leave a small tip and forget about it, if I owned a bar I wouldn’t want to take that chance. Especially when there are lots of options out there. And especially since you never know who it might be that you’re offending. In this case, the bartender angered a women who happens to work in public relations and over the course of her ten years of work pretty much knows everyone in the media (print, radio and TV). And now Ali has made it her personal mission to let everyone know about the poor customer service at the Yardhouse; you can read her blog entry about the Yardhouse.
On a related note, we ended up buying a couch from a cool store named Willow Studio in Kensington and in talking to the owner, Sandra, discovered that she too had had a bad experience at the Yardhouse and will never return. Not a good start for the Kensignton Yardhouse if you ask me.
Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:54 Posted in General
