Mark P.
Yelp
Went to Maria's with my bride on Sat night on Jan 25th Sat night approx 7:30pm. We were greeted in a timely fashion by our waitress. when asked if what we would like to drink, I asked for a Chianti (hey when in Rome) I was told we are out of wine. I asked for any Miller product or beer and she replied we are out of beer. I finally asked well then what is available to us, I asked do you have Pepsi or Coke?? We have Cola and Grape and other flavors of soda, (I thought OK ) it's not her fault lets have soft drinks( which were good by the way). We placed our pizza order along with the soft drinks and the pizza came back accurate to what we ordered along with an order of garlic bread which was very good.
Now how to make our experience or anyone's dinning experience for that matter a bit better.
1) to have no beer or wines available when they are on the menu on a Saturday night is in my book inexcusable ( especially in Milwaukee) the manager should have (and maybe he/she did, I don't know) the mgr or owner once notified at the very least should have went to neighboring liquor store or Pick n Save and purchased 1 cs of Miller Lite and possibly another beer to at least have a beer offering in between beer supplier stops, while at the Liq store or Pick n Save they could have also purchased the 4 pack wines of Sweet Red, Merlot or White Zin, so you could offer a wine selection to the customers vs just saying we are out...
2) the Garlic Bread (just buttered per our choice) came out warm and very good, but it was served with ice cold marinara vs warmed or at least room temp
3) I feel a small dinner salad should have been available as well. I am not asking that Maria's brings in all the materials to make at least side salads, but if they could contact a vending type company that produces salads and deliver to Maria's and keep track of rotating the salad inventory every 2-3days to ensure freshness where Maria's will not have to worry about it, and offer (for example) Paul Neuman's salad dressing or another type salad dressing packets, Italian, Balsamic, and maybe a Ranch, so the dressing btl's do not go bad, and then Maria's could be in the salad business as well with very little waste.
4) Lastly this restaurant is under new ownership.... for at least possibly 1 yr it was pick up pretty much only... one would thing within that first year and now that they are open for dine in, they could have started to replace their vinyl red check table clothes as most of them are cracked and old, as well as some of the chair seat. If they purchased 3-4 table clothes per first yr of takeout operation, they could have all been replaced by now, as for the cracked chair seats again get a quote of all chairs for a better replacement price and try to do 2 per month and then the chairs would start getting repaired overtime.
In summary our pizza, drinks, and garlic bread were all very good, they just need to cosmetically replace things from the original owner. think about getting 4pack wines, you will know your cost, and will not have to worry about 750ml btls going flat, and think a side salad supplier to rotate inventory keeping everything fresh and rotated out every 2-3 days with foil pack dressings and this would really round out your menu offerings.
Again, all food items and drinks were very good during our visit, but there needs to be something in place if you run out of beer and wine in between supplier visits.
thanks much - mark