Rancid drinks + poor customer service + bad management = lost business

Joined: Apr 04, 2005
Posts: 7
1

I hate to write a bad review for this place since I have had so many good experiences at Kro's Nest since the old place next to Worker's Stadium, and I haven't written up a positive review for them before, but something was off with the location at Sanlitun last night and the manager on duty's conduct warrants this review of our experience.

4 of us ordered a grilled chicken salad, a Caesar salad, medium half beef & cheese and half chicken pizza, a flat bread pepperoni pizza, a couple of beers and a Coke. The grilled chicken salad was good as was the beef & cheese/chicken pizza. The flat bread pepperoni pizza was mediocre, not what we had come to expect from a Kro's Nest pizza. The Caesar salad was so loaded with raw garlic that it left all of our mouths burning for hours afterward. But the main problem was with the soft drinks. There was something wrong with the Coke - it tasted dirty or moldy, like the tap hadn't been cleaned in a long time, so we asked for it to be replaced with a Sprite. Same problem - it had a dirty/moldy taste, again it seemed like something must be wrong with the tap. So we sent the Sprite back as well and ordered a 25 RMB bottle of water since that was the only water listed on the menu.

When we received the bill, they had charged us 15 RMB for the dirty/moldy tasting Coke (to their credit they didn't charge us for the dirty/moldy Sprite), so we complained to the waitress, who told us there was nothing that she could do. We asked to see the manager, who came over to our table a few minutes later. He spoke no English so our Chinese friend explained the problem to him, and his reply was along the lines of "Coke from the tap tastes different than Coke from a can or a bottle" and refused to take the foul-tasting Coke off of the 368 RMB bill. Normally I would have continued to argue the point, but one of our group said it wasn't worth it for 15 RMB, and she was probably right. However, she will also never go to any Kro's Nest again, and she will steer all of her fairly substantial international clientele away from all Kro's Nest locations in the future. Thousands or tens of thousands of RMB in revenue lost by Kro's Nest over some short-sighted manager's determination to charge us for a rancid Coke that was sent back because it was so bad.

Although my friend and all of her business clients will never return to any Kro's Nest, I'll likely give them another shot because I have previously had so many good experiences there and the wait staff at the Sanlitun location are nice, if inexperienced. But another incident like last night's will put me off of at least the Sanlitun Kro's Nest for good. Poor customer service and a manager with a bad attitude won't be rewarded when there are so many other places to get good pizza in Beijing now. Last night's manager needs additional training on how to deal with valid customer complaints, rather than arguing with them and forcing them to pay for an undrinkable drink.

I hear you.

I wanted to Kro's to succeed (well, it seems they are doing given that they now have so many locations) and support them after I read what happened to the owner with his business partner, but the product is so consistently below par (been three or four times to various locations) that I could not bring myself to go there through choice anymore.

The pizzas are doughy, stodgy, excessive (look at how BIG our pizzas are) quantity over quality and the service is normally wretched.

Sugar Shack in Wudaokou, Hutong Pizza, even the Tree and countless others are just a much, much better experience than going to a Kro's these days.

What a shame.

For god sake's man. Have you been here so long that you are acting as stingy as them? Oh, yeah, your name is jeffcheap.

15RMB and you write a long bad review? Listen, next time order a whiskey instead of a Sprite or Coke. You need to calm down.