Craig R.
Yelp
I'm a licensed General Building Contractor and I've been doing residential remodeling since 1972. I've been shopping at Beronio for nearly that long, but always with a great deal of reluctance. Why? Because ever since the very first time I went there, I've been treated quite shabbily by the employees. I've shopped at many, many different lumber yards on both sides of the bay and Beronio is by far the worst with regard to customer-friendliness, common courtesy, and helpfulness.
Their basic sales procedure is non-standard. Whereas many establishments help you write up your order, then take your payment, and then help you locate and load your materials, at Beronio it's the reverse. First you get the lumber (and woe unto you if you need help finding and/or loading items), then you must get your order "written up." This can be done only by a certain few employees, wearing a certain color cap, and it can be deucedly difficult to find ANY of them -- much less one who isn't already taken. Then you're expected to drive your vehicle out of the lumber yard (but your load is inspected, and the write-up verified by an inspector at the gate, and your vehicle license number recorded), and you park OUTSIDE the lumberyard's fenced in area, and you walk back to the office whereupon you pay for your goods. The sole advantage to this backward way of doing things is that you do get to see (i.e. inspect) the actual material you'll be buying.
My biggest single complaint has been the ATTITUDE of the employees out in the yard. Whereas, in my opinion, THEY should be looking for YOU, and asking how they can help you -- on nearly every one of my visits, the contrary has been the case. I have to first know which color HAT indicates the type of employee I need (again one for loading, another for writing up the load), then I have to find one who's available, or will be soon, then I'm often made to feel as though I need to genuflect or in other ways supplicate the employee so that he will deign to serve me, and then, finally, I load up, drive out, walk back, and pay.
On the positive side, the prices there are not above average, and the selection is above average. They stock quite a few sizes of lumber, for example, that Home Depot does not.
My first suggestion to improve the customer experience there would be to post large signs so that they're EXTREMELY VISIBLE and easy to understand, which detail their non-standard shopping procedures.
Second, a high-powered crash course for all their employees, stressing how more friendly treatment of your custormers is beneficial to the company and to the customers.
Third, if any of the old-timers there simply can't lose their "attitude," either give them a position where they have zero customer contact -- or FIRE 'em.