PRactical P.R. BlogThe Leader in Small Business Public Relations

I don’t cook, so we go out to restaurants a lot. We were thinking of going to a new casual pizza place on Saturday night, so I decided to order a salad for a takeout lunch one day to try it out. 

I ordered the salad and picked it up and noticed that they didn’t put bread in the bag with it (as every other takeout place that I’ve gone to does), so I asked the guy (who was dressed like a manager) if I could get some bread with it.  He said they don’t offer that.  I said that Cheesecake Factory offers it, but he said they weren’t going to. I said, “For $8.50, you should really give me a piece of bread,” but he said no. The place has only been open a week, but the place was crowded at lunch time, and the manager seemed pretty pleased with himself. 

So I got home and was very dissatisfied. I really wanted that bread.  Plus, I paid $8.50 for a salad that had lettuce, tomatoes, chick peas, calamata olives, and a few slices of hard-boiled eggs along with so-so house Italian dressing.  It costs $2 to add gorgonzola cheese, which would have made it $10.50. I really wanted a Cheesecake Factory Cobb salad but this new place was much closer.  But I decided to remind myself of what a lunch-sized Cobb salad would cost at Cheesecake (with the world’s greatest balsamic vinaigrette and tons of bread).  I was surprised that it would only cost $9.95.  And that includes, avocado, lettuce, chicken, blue cheese, bacon and tomatoes. 

So this pizza place not only overcharges, but they wouldn’t give me bread.  We won’t be going there on Saturday night.  And I’ll be telling this story to my friends. And I’m writing it in my blog.  And I’m going to e-mail this blog link to someone who writes restaurant reviews in the area.  I’m sure some of you will think I’m being a difficult customer, but when businesses do annoying things, it really gets my back up.  If they had just given me that one piece of bread, I would have been fine.  They saved money on that order by not giving me that one piece of bread, but they lost out on my being a customer and potentially many other customers. Dumb P.R. move.