William R.
Yelp
The service here needs some work as of recently. We love this place, it's one of our favorite spots to go get breakfast and very close by. The food is great, live music great, the atmosphere is great, but the service could use some work.
I'll state the issues then offer some simple solutions.
1. First the back room could use some work, we have been directed there the last few times and it feels so disassociated with the rest of the restaurant. We have gone with a party of 5 and 6 which by no means is large. We have asked to push 2 tables together and we told no we need to go to the back.
The solution to this would be to actually seat people then instead of letting them choose their space. I see plenty of groups with 2 or 3 people sitting at much larger tables that could have easily sat 6+ people.
The back room also has lots of equipment such as a projector display and speakers. Live music is one of the main reasons we come here. Maybe there's a way to sync a camera and live stream the performance to the projector and speakers in the back that way it doesn't feel so disassociated with the rest of the restaurant and is more enjoyable.
2. On our last two visits servers didn't deliver everything both times. Usually this isn't a huge deal to me. The first time after waiting about 10 minutes after everyone in my party had their food. I walked up and asked them if they forgot my plate? They said they did, handed me my plate and I walked it back to our table in the back. No biggie. The second time we went the server brought almost all of our food, but missed a taco. I let her know I was missing a taco. She then proceeded to try and convince me I was wrong which was really weird and uncomfortable. I told her I would check my receipt just incase I missed it on accident. Sure enough it was there, right as I was showing it to her another waiter walked over with the taco to deliver it.
I am amazed that she would rather be rude to us then just look at the order and simply count the amount of tacos that were ordered. It's not hard to say "oh ok, one sec, let me go check for you".
3. Lastly the tipping via QR code. We always tip the staff as well as the musicians. In retrospect, we are tipping them 20% to walk food over to us... they are not taking our order, boxing our food or serving our drinks, we do all that. The problem is when you order the app asks you for a tip right there. We have given good tips both times, but after issues with service both times, it makes me wonder what I am tipping for. The least they can do is be friendly to their customers.
I've worked in the service industry in the past, so I feel for them. But I'm reality many austin restaurants are automating in house delivery via service robots. This place is already automated much of their other services already. Simply said, be kind to your guests and treat them with respect. Servers interact very little as is, there's no reason to treat guests as if they are an annoyance for being there.
TLDR: we have visited 2 times recently and have had issues with service, such as seating arrangements, undelivered food and rude customer service.
We love this place and would love for it to succeed. We think we will take a break for a bit and come back in 3 months to see if service has improved.