My husband and I drove from Decatur to St. Louis last night, a two-hour drive, so we could eat at the Cheesecake Factory and use a gift card we had received at Christmas. We knew the restaurant would be busy, given the holiday, so we called ahead at 6pm. We arrived about 30 minutes later, waited in line to check-in and then were given a pager and told our wait would be 10 minutes.
We proceeded to wait for 60 minutes and then waited in line again to ask the hostess how much longer our table would be. This time, we were told 5 minutes. After waiting an additional 20 minutes, over an hour and a half in total wait time not counting the call ahead time, we were forced to leave our pager and grab a quick dinner at another restaurant.
We were extremely disappointed in the way our wait time was repeatedly grossly misrepresented. If we had been told that our wait would be over an hour and a half when we first arrived, we would have known we couldn't wait that long and still get home at a decent hour. We would have declined the pager and ordered our meal to-go or, at a minimum, been able to go directly to another restaurant.
We understand that holidays are a busy time for restaurants, but we feel strongly that you should have enough professionalism and respect for your patrons to be able to give them a reasonably accurate wait time and allow them to make an informed decision.
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